


I'll always wear the crown that you gave me

by killianslonghaul



Series: I'll always wear the crown that you gave me [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Minor Wells Jaha/Raven Reyes, Requited Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 13:13:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12366537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killianslonghaul/pseuds/killianslonghaul
Summary: It’s later that night, back in their apartment, that she crawls into Octavia’s bed, feeling so sure and so lost, all at the same time.“I’m in love with your brother,” she says quietly, picking at the corner of one of Octavia’s pillows. Her best friend wraps an arm over her shoulders and tucks her under her chin, and Clarke doesn’t know why, but a few tears slip from her eyes.Octavia rubs her knuckles across her back, voice quiet and solemn when she says, “Yeah. I know."





	I'll always wear the crown that you gave me

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing an AU for Bellarke, but something about these two is that they literally fit into any AU that you can think of. Since Childhood Friends is a popular one, I figured I would start with that. I've slaved over this for weeks, so let me know what you think! I'm still getting into writing Bellamy and Clarke so if you have suggestions for improvement just let me know :) 
> 
> Title and lyrics from "Legends" by Kelsea Ballerini, which makes me think about Bellamy and Clarke every single damn time, but especially because of the line that I used for the title.

_like we were written down in permanent marker,_  
_not even the brightest sun could ever fade_  
_come whichever hell or high water_  
_it was always me and you either way_

**_ Nine _ **

Clarke first meets Octavia when she moves into town in late October of her fourth grade year. She’s small and a little lanky, but when Murphy takes her pencil just as she’s pulled it out of her bag, Octavia pinches his earlobe until he gives it back. A few kids laugh and a couple cast side glances at the new girl, but Clarke just wants to know how she didn’t even get caught by the teacher.

When lunch time comes around that day, Clarke plops herself down in a seat next to Octavia. Big, brown eyes meet hers, wary but curious. Clarke just smiles at her. “That was really cool, what you did to Murphy. He’s the worst and he deserved it. Don’t let the other kids make you feel weird.”

And Octavia grins slowly, the corners of her mouth tipping up gradually until she breaks out in a small giggle. “Thanks.”

“I’m Clarke, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Clarke. I’m Octavia Blake.” And she’s so proud, her chin tilting up as she states her name. The kid on the other side of her snorts as Octavia’s ponytail swishes wildly, and instead of it fazing her in the slightest, she flicks her head just right so that her hair hits them in the face.

The boy scoots a little further away, frowning, and Clarke thinks that she wants to be just like Octavia Blake, fearless and proud.

Wells, one of her friends, tries to tell her that Octavia is crazy the next morning in homeroom. She shoves his shoulder and tells him that _she_ likes her, and that if he doesn’t he should get over it. When lunch comes around, she sits herself down right next to Octavia Blake again.

“My friend tried to tell me you were kind of crazy,” Clarke says, matter-of-factly.

Octavia furrows a brow, but seems to understand that Clarke isn’t going to dump milk on her or something like that, a small smile on her face. “What did you tell him?”

“That he was stupid.”

Octavia laughs and then, surprising Clarke, wraps an arm around her shoulder. “Thanks, Clarke.”

Sitting together at lunch becomes a routine for them easily—sometimes they switch sandwiches because Octavia doesn’t like _too_ much peanut butter, or they’ll switch puddings because Octavia likes vanilla better. It’s fun, being friends with her, laughing when a kid slips and falls because there was a wet spot on the floor, staring at each other with wide eyes when a teacher stands to make a warning about rowdiness, leaning close together to talk about which kids Santa definitely will be leaving coal for this Christmas.

Clarke learns that she has a brother—Bellamy—who is fourteen and Octavia’s favorite person in the world. She finds out that her dad left when she was younger, and that she barely remembers him. Bellamy remembers hers a little, but has no recollection of his own whatsoever. Their mom, according to Octavia, works at home and is on her computer a lot, but sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the middle school, too. No matter how busy she gets, though, she bakes brownies and cookies all the time, anything Octavia asks for.  

Clarke tells Octavia she’s an only child, and that her mom is a doctor, that she saves a lot of people, but it means she isn’t home a lot. She tells her that her dad is the best, her hero—an art teacher at the elementary school. She tells her that sometimes she thinks her dad isn’t happy, but that she loves him and how he always takes her to this park down the road from their house.

They learn that neither of them likes mint chocolate, that they both love pepperoni and olives on their pizza, and that while Octavia gets really tan during the summer, Clarke struggles not to get a sunburn after being outside for an hour.

Three weeks after they first meet, a kid pulls on Clarke’s hair right when she tries to drink her chocolate milk, and some of it spills on her shirt.

“Aw, man,” she complains, picking up a napkin and trying to wipe at it. It’s her favorite shirt, and she knows that now she’ll have to go the rest of the day with a small brown spot on the front of it. She sits the milk down and glances at Octavia to talk about how much it sucks, but Octavia is standing and has the kid who pulled her hair by the collar.

“That’s not nice,” she’s saying, eyes as hard as her grip. “You should tell her you’re sorry.”

Clarke is nearly convinced that Octavia is going to do something to hurt the kid when a teacher pulls the two apart, giving Octavia a stern look. “Now, Octavia. I don’t know how they did things at your old school, but we don’t do things like that here. I’m going to give you a warning for now, but I don’t want to see anything like this again. Do you understand?”

Octavia nods, though she suddenly looks upset, her shoulders slumped when she sits back down.

“Thanks for sticking up for me.” Clarke smiles, but when Octavia still seems unhappy, Clarke sighs. Then, she picks up the chocolate chip cookie from her tray and hands it to Octavia. “Here, as my thank you.”

It takes a minute, but Octavia finally smiles and takes the cookie, only to break it in half and hand the bigger piece back to Clarke. “I’ll always stick up for you. We’re best friends.”

“Duh,” Clarke says. “We’ll even be best friends when we’re old.”

“Yeah, like sixteen.”

“Or a hundred.”

They giggle, putting their hands over their mouths to keep the sound from getting too far. 

They’ve known each other just over a month when Clarke first goes to her house, after several days of asking her mom if she could. Octavia lives close to the school so they walk, linking arms and skipping for a moment, until their book bags are too heavy against their backs and they stop.

The inside of Octavia’s house is warm and the TV is on even though no one is in front of it. A woman with hair the same color as Octavia’s comes in from the kitchen, smiling.

“Is this the Clarke I’ve heard so much about?” she asks, taking Octavia’s book bag and then gesturing for Clarke to give up hers as well.

“Yep!” Octavia chimes as her mom sets the book bags to the side.

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Clarke. I’m Aurora. You let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Clarke nods, following Octavia into the living room. The channel is soon changed to Disney Channel, where Kim Possible is on. “My favorite!” Octavia says, collapsing onto the couch. “C’mon, Clarke!”

“Bellamy is staying after school to work on a project, so he’ll be home later.” Aurora’s voice comes from the kitchen as Clarke sits down, and Octavia nods, eyes trained on the TV.

“Okay!”

They watch TV for a while, but wind up in Octavia’s room, laughing as they put on the different colors of lipgloss that Octavia has.

“My mom doesn’t let me have makeup,“ Clarke whispers, glancing at the door. Octavia’s eyes widen, but she hands Clarke the glittery pink tube anyway, grin stretching from ear to ear.

It’s close to six when Bellamy pokes his head in. He looks just like his pictures that are all over the walls, with his dark hair and freckles scattered across his cheeks. “Hey, O, mom wants to know if your friend is staying for dinner. Also, hi, I’m Bellamy.”

She waves at him. “Clarke. Nice to meet you.”  

Octavia turns to Clarke, smiling. “Do you want to stay?”

Clarke pauses. “My mom said she wanted me home by dark.”  

“My mom can talk to your parents, trust me. It’s just a little while longer, anyway.” Octavia’s bottom lip is poked out, hands clasped in front of her.

Another moment passes and Bellamy must sense her hesitation because he smiles easily. “Seriously, our mom is the best at talking to parents. One time I shoved a kid at the park and by the time we left, _their_ mom was apologizing to _me_.”

He seems like he’s telling the truth, and yeah, she would definitely rather stay here than go home. So, she nods. “Yeah, yeah I’d like to stay. Can I use your phone to call my mom?”

Octavia squeals and wraps Clarke in a hug so tight that she struggles to breathe, but she hugs back because she’s never had a friend like this, never felt so much like someone wanted her around just because. It makes her feel warm.

And when all four of them sit down around the small table in the kitchen, Bellamy tells Clarke embarrassing stories about Octavia and Octavia reciprocates, sticking her tongue out when Bellamy’s cheeks turn red.

It must be nice to have a sibling, she thinks.

Aurora drops her off afterward, and she finds her dad sleeping on the couch, TV still on but quiet in front of him. She takes a blanket out of the closet to place over him. Her throat is tight, squeezing so hard because she knows it isn’t fair to him, knows that he stays for her. It’s her fault that he’s trapped and unhappy, her fault that he can’t leave. She tries to think about Octavia’s dad, wondering if he’s happier, but she knows it’s not the same. Aurora is much too nice for someone to leave her and be happier that way. If anything, she’s sure that their dad being gone made Aurora happier.

After making sure the blanket is secure around her dad and turning off the TV, she tosses an “I’m home, mom” in the direction of her mom’s bedroom and then goes to her own room. She winds up crying quietly into her pillow, and when she falls asleep, she dreams of Octavia’s living room, with Bellamy and Aurora and Octavia and herself all sitting together on the couch, like Clarke is just a part of their family.  

She can almost feel Octavia’s arm looped through hers, but when she wakes up the next morning for school, her parents are already gone to work as usual. Sadness lingering in her, she briefly thinks about staying home. But school means Octavia, so she gets ready quickly and is thirty minutes early for the bus, sitting on the curb in front of her house and doodling in one of her notebooks until it comes.

\------

Clarke loves them in a way that surprises her, like the rush she feels after spinning around really fast on the merry-go-round. Aurora is nice and calm, never, ever raising her voice. Octavia is fun and wild, mischievous but always looking out for the people she cares about. Bellamy is smart and protective, the way older brothers should be. He helps them with their homework sometimes in the afternoons, and then makes them a grilled cheese when they’re finished, even though Aurora always tells them that they won’t have room for dinner later.

She spends as much time as she can at their house over that next summer, any time her mom will let her. They have a little pool in their yard with a blown up ring around the top that keeps the water in. Her favorite thing is to splash around in the water that comes up to her chin when she stands on her tip toes. Octavia makes her she puts on sun screen so that she doesn’t burn, and Aurora always makes Bellamy get in with them to watch them, even though he plays with them, too. He lets them jump off the ladder, always clapping after and giving them ratings on their dives.

They’re almost always tens.

Most days, they spend some time swimming around with their feet pressed together to pretend they’re mermaids, swimming with their hands out in front of them and giggling when they come up from underneath the water, droplets dripping off of their hair.

When they’re tired, Bellamy wraps their towels around their shoulders and they run back into the house, laughing the whole way. Those days, they usually wind up eating popsicles in the living room floor, touching them together like they’re toasting at a fancy dinner, holding their pinkies out as they suck all of the juice from the pouches.

They bake cookies sometimes in the afternoon, sneaking some of the cookie dough when Aurora isn’t looking. They play board games with the cookies on plates beside them, and Bellamy always lets one of them win, even though he says he doesn’t. Aurora watches them from the couch, smiling as they laugh and play.

Clarke has never wanted to be somewhere as much as she wants to be with them—with the girl who makes her want to be braver, her brother that teases her but always takes care of her like he does Octavia, and her mother, who smiles warmly every time she comes over and never makes her feel like she’s overstayed her welcome.

She loves them, all three of them, more than she thought was possible of someone who isn’t your family.

And the amazing thing is that she’s pretty sure that they love her, too.

\------

When it’s time to plan her tenth birthday party, her mom rents a party house in the park and tells Clarke she can invite anyone she wants. The list is pretty easy and short—Wells, Octavia, Bellamy, Aurora, and then she gives a few invitations to some kids in class—Maya, Jasper, Monty, Bryan, and Charlotte.

The Blakes show up first, bearing three wrapped boxes. After setting them in the designated area, Octavia nearly tackles her, arms squeezing around her tightly. “Happy Birthday!” she screams, loud enough that Clarke jerks her head away just a little, her ears ringing.

Aurora hugs her too, arms gentle. When she pulls away, she pats a soft hand against Clarke’s cheek. “Happy Birthday, sweetie.” 

Bellamy reaches up and flicks once at the crown on her head, smiling. “Happy Birthday, princess.”

She picks up the edges of her dress and tucks one leg behind the other to curtsy at him, shoving him when he tries to touch her crown again. “Stop it.”

“Come on, princess.” His arm comes up again, and he’s laughing now.

Octavia steps in, squaring up to her brother as if she isn’t more than half a foot shorter than him. “Get your own crown, Bell.”

“Maybe I want hers,” he says, even though he tucks his hands into his jeans. He’s grinning, and Clarke knows that he isn’t actually being mean, but something about being around Octavia makes her braver.

“Sorry, only one princess allowed at his party and that’s me.” Clarke takes a step so that she’s standing by Octavia and looking up at Bellamy, too. She crosses her arms and hopes that it looks as tough as she wants it to.

He glances between them and then shrugs, his smile never faltering. “Whatever you want. It’s your birthday.”  

Clarke holds her stance for a long second, and then she nods quickly, relaxing her stance. “Yep! Now come on, let me show you my cake.”

Octavia easily relaxes too, latching onto Clarke’s arm and giggling as they walk over. And Bellamy follows, tugging playfully on Octavia’s ponytail when she leans her face too close to the frosted pastry. 

Wells isn’t too far behind, his dad immediately attaching himself to her mom’s side. Clarke watches for just a moment, always wondering what they could be talking about. They work together, and have for years—it’s why she and Wells have known each other for so long. But their conversations always seem so serious, like they’re trying to decide whether or not to send their children off to boarding school.

(That’s usually what Clarke thinks, even though she knows that’s not right.)

(At least, she hopes.)

Other adults show up with their kids—people that know her parents and just happen to have kids around Clarke’s age. She knows them, of course, and has seen them around. They’re fine, perfectly nice kids. A few of the people from school show up as well, all excited to rush onto the playground that’s just outside.

But Clarke spends nearly every moment of her party with Octavia, Bellamy, and then Wells, giggling as they try to pin the tail on the donkey and plot to steal some of the cake’s frosting before it gets cut. Bellamy is the only one who manages, walking back over to them with the evidence on his finger. He goes to eat it, only for Octavia to swipe most of it off of his finger and onto hers. Then, she holds it out to Clarke, who gets just a small bit off. She offers some to Wells, also, but he shakes his head.

So, the three of them clean their fingers while stealing glances at the adults, making sure that their thievery has gone unnoticed.

 “I might have to go get more now, someone took all of mine,” Bellamy complains, glancing over his shoulder at where the table of food sits. “What do you think, princess?”

Clarke pretends to think, adjusting the plastic crown on her head. Before she can answer, her mom yells that she can come open her presents, and they all go to that corner of the room.

There are nice things—some sweaters, a beanie that’s a little too big for her head, a small karaoke machine from her mom that makes Octavia’s eyes go wide.

It’s the last presents she opens that she likes the most. Bellamy’s picked out a clip that she can put on her bookbag—it has a pink cupcake attached to it and it lights up, flashing pink, green, purple, and blue when pressed. 

Octavia’s is a framed picture of the three of them in Clarke’s pool from the summer—their hair is all a mess, sticking out in every direction. Clarke is sandwiched between them, her blonde hair and pale skin sticking out against the Blake siblings, but their smiles are all matching, wide and bright. The picture frame says “best friends forever” in big letters on the bottom.

And their mom has bought her a small sketchbook, not any bigger than a regular notebook, but the pages are soft and there are two charcoal pencils that have come with it. “Octavia said you like to draw,” Aurora tells her, and Clarke grins.

“I do, thank you Ms. Blake.”

She spend the rest of the party dancing with Octavia to the songs playing over the speakers, and when it comes time to go, she begs to go home with her best friend. Her mom hesitates for only a second and then agrees, checking to make sure that Clarke can wear some of Octavia’s clothes for the night.

On their way to Aurora’s car, Bellamy tries to snatch her crown off of her head, but it gets stuck in her hair, yanking at her scalp. “Ow!” she screeches, causing both Octavia and Aurora to look back at her.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Bellamy repeats over and over, settling the crown back down on top of her head and rubbing his hand over the afflicted area. “I didn’t know it would get stuck like that, I was just playing. I was going to give it right back. Are you okay? Sorry, Clarke.”

She rubs at the spot where her hair was pulled, glaring up at him. “Meanie.”

“Hey, I’m really sorry.” He glances toward his mom and sister and then looks back at her. “How about I promise to let you guys play my video game for an hour. Does that make it better?”

Her plan is to still be mad at him, but she hears Octavia’s small gasp and yeah, she really wants to play his video game, too. “Okay. It’s okay.”

He nods, and this time when he reaches for her head, he straightens her crown, making sure it’s centered. “There you go, princess. All perfect again.”

“Are you going to call me princess forever now?” she asks once they’re settled into the car, Bellamy in the front seat and her and Octavia in the back.

After a moment of considering her question, he glances back at her with a small shrug. “Maybe I will.”

(He does.)

**_ Eleven _ **

Clarke giggles as she opens the packet of sprinkles in her hands, dumping the entire thing onto the cupcake in front of her. Octavia laughs, a cackle that echoes against the kitchen walls.

It’s the middle of summer and Octavia’s mom is working at the school, but Clarke’s mom finally decided that Bellamy was old enough to watch them by himself. Ever since, she’s been spending more and more time at their house.

“That’s too much,” Octavia manages to say through a giggle, licking her finger and sticking it to some of the sprinkles on the plate. Once satisfied with the amount she’s gotten stuck there, she eats them, eyes wide with delight.

When Bellamy reaches over Clarke’s shoulder to do the same, she swats at his hand. “Octavia did it!” he complains, managing to reach around her and get some of the sprinkles anyway.

Clarke huffs. “Well, _she’s_ my best friend.”

Octavia grins at her brother, sticking out her tongue for just a second. “Mhmm!”

He tilts his head at her. “Well what am I?” 

Clarke shrugs. “My best friend’s brother.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. “Whatever.”

Later, he’s bringing Clarke seltzer water because she definitely ate too much frosting and made herself sick. She’s sitting on the edge of the tub when he pokes his head in and hands her the glass. He situates himself on the now closed toilet lid.

“Tummy feeling any better?” he asks, and she nods a little as she sips on the drink in her hand.

She’s warm, but her stomach isn’t turning anymore, so she figures the worst has passed. He pushes back some hair from her forehead and his hand is cool, a nice difference from the sweaty heat of her skin. “Thank you.” Her voice is quiet but he smiles easily, nodding at her.

“Yeah, no problem.”

It makes her think of what she said earlier, and so, looking at the bubbles in her glass, she mumbles, “You can be my friend, too.”

He shifts, and she realizes he’s trying to get her to look at him, so she does. “What?”

“What I said earlier,” she says, a little annoyed that she has to explain. “About you being my friend’s brother. You can be my friend, too.”

“Oh.” He nods, his smile big as he tells her, “I think we’re already friends, princess.”

**_ Twelve _ **

It isn’t like she forgets that she has other friends. She still sees Wells whenever his dad comes over for cookouts or other silly little things that her family does on the weekends, and she talks to people other than Octavia in class.

It’s just that Octavia is her favorite person in the universe. She always wants Clarke around, too— even if they spend the entire week together, she still asks if she wants to come stay for the weekend, too. Plus, spending time with Octavia at her house means she gets to see Bellamy and Aurora, too, who are probably her second and third favorite people in the universe.

Her life is just better with them in it.

Six months before he graduates from high school, Bellamy starts working at an auto shop in town and so when Clarke comes over after school he’s not there as often. She misses him more than she thought she would, the way he always barges in Octavia’s room to annoy them, how he helps them with their homework even if it’s a subject he hates. She hates that he’s not around to call her princess and tell her funny stories about his own best friend, Miller, who always seems to be doing crazy things.

“He’s worried about college, about paying for his textbooks and stuff,” Octavia tells her one weeknight, her eyes intently focused on the handmade keychain in her lap.

Clarke just nods, wondering what she should say. She knows that Octavia’s family struggles more than hers, that life has been harder on them, and she never knows what she can say when it comes up.

“That’s nice of him, to try to help your mom.”

Octavia smiles, though she still doesn’t look up from her project. “He always has. Before we moved, he would do yard work and stuff around the neighborhood and slip the money into the bottom of mom’s purse. I’m sure she knew, but she never said anything. And you know he gives tutoring sessions at the school for some extra cash, too, but he knows that he won’t be able to once he graduates and is going to college.”

“Is he excited though? To go to college?”

“He is, but I think part of him wishes he could have gone further away, to a bigger school. He just worries about us.” Octavia is biting her lip, but whether it’s because of what they’re talking about or because she’s trying to attach the hook on her keychain, Clarke isn’t sure.

“I wish I had an older brother, like you do,” Clarke admits, setting her own finished keychain in front of Octavia. It has both of their initials on it—OAB and CEG—with a heart and a “BFFs” included in the design.

“Well, that’s what best friends are for. They’re like siblings except you don’t have to live with them. That part kind of sucks sometimes.” Octavia sounds so serious, but she finishes her keychain and hands it to Clarke. It’s similar—a C+O and a “best friends” a few notches below that. “I mean, me and Bell are kind of like your siblings.”

Clarke nods. “Kind of.”

Bellamy gets home not too long after that and Octavia runs to hug him, arms squeezing him hard enough that he pinches her elbow to get her to loosen her grip. Clarke watches the exchange, still sort of feeling like she got cheated by not having a sibling—someone that loves you no matter what secrets you tell them, someone to have your back all the time.

But then Bellamy looks at her over Octavia’s head, and she must look as sad as she feels because he opens his free arm to her. She hesitates for only a second before taking a step into his embrace. Octavia loops her arm through Clarke’s and smiles at her.

And she thinks that maybe she doesn’t need a sibling, after all. Maybe they’re enough.

**_ Fourteen _ **

“You know what would be so funny?” Octavia asks randomly one day after school, bent over on her bed in concentration as she paints her toenails red.

“What?” Clarke asks absentmindedly, biting her lip as she tries to paint her left hand’s fingernails.

“If you married my brother.”

Clarke jolts with the laugh that bursts out of her, and she gets pink nail polish all over her knuckles. “What?” she shrieks, still giggling to the point that tears sting her eyes.

“Oh come on!” Octavia defends, but her own eyes are bright with laughter. “You’d be my real sister!”

Finally getting control of her breathing, Clarke shakes her head and reaches for the nail polish remover and cotton balls to clean up her mess. “We’re already sisters, Octavia.”

The comment is effortless, rolling off of her tongue as easily as singing her favorite songs. Octavia shifts until she’s sitting right beside Clarke, lips pursed. “Not real ones.”

Something in her expression makes Clarkes stomach twist, and she bumps their shoulders together. “Just because we aren’t blood related doesn’t mean we can’t be sisters. I don’t need to marry your brother for that, not that I would for that reason anyway. He’s kind of weird.”

Octavia raises an eyebrow, but when she opens her mouth to reply, a voice comes from the other side of the wall. “Thanks a lot, princess!”

Clarke can feel her cheeks warming, but Octavia is laughing, clutching her side as she doubles over, her pedicure long forgotten.

“Sorry?” She doesn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but she hears Bellamy’s chuckle and she knows he’s not really mad. Still, Clarke puts a hand on her forehead. “Just what I need,” she says quieter, glaring when Octavia laughs again. “For your brother to hate me.”

“He doesn’t hate you, Clarke-y. Right, Bell?”

There’s a small pause, long enough that Bellamy wonders if he heard Octavia, though she’s sure it would be impossible for him not to. Then, he says, “She’s alright I guess.”

“Hey!” Clarke protests, and Octavia snorts, her grin wide. “Jerk!”

“You’re the one that called me weird!”

But when he sits down on the other side of her while they’re watching a movie later that afternoon, she glances over at him and his eyes meet hers. He grins, goofy and obnoxious, but Clarke is suddenly struck because he _is_ cute.

When she first met him, he was a thin and awkward fourteen year old boy with braces. Now, the braces are gone and he’s definitely not thin and awkward anymore. He’s still tall, sure, but at nineteen, he fills out every shirt that he wears, his muscles built after working for so long at an auto shop.

His freckles are still spattered across his cheeks, his hair still the same dark brown, curly mess. He’s the same Bellamy that made fun of her crown when she was ten, who once picked her up off of a lawn chair and threw her in the pool while she shrieked, who tugs on her hair after Octavia spends an hour curling it.

But now that Octavia has thrown this idea into her head, she thinks that maybe winding up with Bellamy Blake wouldn’t be the worst thing. He’s sweet to her for the most part even when he’s teasing her, and Octavia clearly loves him, even when she gets annoyed with him.

It’s silly, she knows. He’s her best friend’s brother and probably thinks of her like a sister, too, and probably always will. Shrugging off the thoughts, she manages to roll her eyes and turn back to the TV, but she can’t help smiling when he bumps her shoulder with his elbow, or when he reaches into her bowl of popcorn and takes a giant handful, shoving it ungracefully into his mouth.

And if he notices that she leans a little into his side as they settle in to watch Aladdin, he doesn’t say anything.

\-----

It’s late in June the summer before she turns fifteen that Bellamy comes home from work, way earlier than he’s supposed to. His eyes are red, his hair messier than usual. Octavia and Clarke look up at him, but Octavia gets up off of the floor first.

“Bell?”

He takes a breath so heavy that it sounds like it hurts, and Clarke’s stomach turns. “O, it’s mom.”

“What?”

“There was an accident.” Clarke knows as soon as he’s spoken, can feel the sharp pain already starting in her chest. Bellamy is still speaking, but Clarke can’t hear him. Even when Octavia bursts into tears and flings herself into her brother’s arms, Clarke can’t feel her limbs, can’t make herself move for a long moment.

Aurora is gone.

A week ago, Clarke and Octavia had a sleepover and Aurora had made them brownies and rented as many movies as they wanted. When they’d both fallen asleep on the floor, Aurora had come behind them to make sure they were covered, that their drinks were out of the way. Clarke had woken up when Aurora’s hand brushed her shoulder, but Octavia’s mom had just smiled. “Go back to sleep, sweetie.”

Just an hour ago, she’d smiled at them before she’d left for the grocery store, asking them what kind of soda they wanted her to bring back.

She was always smiling, always made Clarke feel like she was welcome in their home.

And now she’s gone.

When she looks up, Bellamy and Octavia are still hugging, Octavia’s sobs are shaking her small body, and Bellamy is holding onto her tightly, his eyes closed as he rubs her back. They almost seem like one person, and Clarke suddenly feels like a stranger in a house that she knows as well as her own.

As much as she jokes that they’re like her siblings, too, they aren’t. Aurora wasn’t her mother.  

“I… I’m sorry. Maybe I should g-go.” She stammers, standing awkwardly and stuffing her cell phone into her pocket before heading toward the door. When she passes, she puts her hand on Octavia’s shoulder for just a second, but before she can step too far away, someone grabs her wrist.

She expects it to be Octavia, but it’s Bellamy who has his fingers on her arm. “You don’t have to leave.”  

His eyes are shining with unshed tears, and as she looks at them both looking at her, she’s suddenly struck by how much they look like Aurora. She still thinks maybe she should go, that she doesn’t belong here right now, but she thinks about Aurora’s kind eyes and her chin trembles. Bellamy tugs gently using the grip he has on her wrist, and she lets herself fall into their embrace.

He holds her tightly against him and Octavia wraps her other arm around Clarke as well, shifting her head so that it’s tucked against Clarke’s under Bellamy’s chin. Their foreheads bump and Clarke hugs them back, the gesture feeling like an inadequate comfort. But, she puts everything she has into her grip on Bellamy’s back, on Octavia’s waist.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she knows it’s not enough, that it doesn’t make a difference, but their holds on her tighten a little.

“Mom loved you, too,” Octavia whispers after a moment, her voice raspy.  Her hand rubs up and down on Clarke’s elbow, and she slowly feels the sense of belonging return, familiar and encompassing. It’s then that tears finally fall, that she lets herself cry not only for them, but for herself.

The funeral is small; Clarke wears a short sleeved black dress and keeps her arm looped through Octavia’s the entire time. Bellamy is quiet, taking up residence on Octavia’s other side. Every time Clarke glances over at him, he’s stoic, but she can see his grip on Octavia and knows that his façade is all for her.

Later, after Octavia has passed out in her mother’s bed, that Clarke sits down next to Bellamy on the couch. His eyes meet hers for a second, the silent question in them clear. “She fell asleep,” Clarke tells him, and he nods, sighing. Some of the tenseness seems to leave his shoulders, but there’s still so much stress in his body that she thinks it must be physically painful.

They sit in silence for a moment, and Clarke can feel him hurting just as much as she can feel her own pain. His is aching and deep—a nineteen year old who now has to take care of his little sister, who might have to drop out of college to finish raising her, who had his whole life ahead of him and now has to hit the brakes.

“I know you were being strong for Octavia today,” Clarke whispers, not knowing if she’s helping or hurting, but wanting him to know. “But you don’t have to do that for me.”

He looks up slowly, eyes wary, and she puts on her best brave face. She wills her eyes not to water, her chin not to shake. If he needs her, she’s here. He takes a shaky breath and something shifts in his expression— it’s like a light switch flipping off as his features crumble. She’s shoved herself into his side and wrapped her arms tight around his waist before she’s even really thought about the action. Her face is buried in his neck, and she feels him tremble around her before he’s hugging her back.

She feels his nose brush her ear, and he makes the most broken sound she’s ever heard. It sounds like somewhere between a choke and a sob, and she holds even more firmly as it breaks her heart. It’s easy to press herself into him, shouldering some of his burden, keeping him together as his tears soak her shoulder.

“She’s all I have now, Clarke.” His voice is quiet, a whisper against her hair.

“No,” she says immediately, and her own words are thick. “You have me. You both always have me.”

**_ Fifteen _ **

Clarke pulls her cardigan a little tighter around her as the wind blows, a shiver wracking her body. It’s colder than she was expecting, the late November evening bringing a chill with it that they hadn’t quite experienced yet this fall. Sticking her hands under her thighs, she watches the football game in front of her, glancing around every now and then to see if Octavia is coming back yet.

She knows that her best friend is probably just caught up talking to someone, maybe with the boy that she’s been flirting with for two months, Atom. It’s the only reason that Octavia comes to football games, because it’s where everyone from their high school is on Friday nights.

Caught up in the game, she nearly jumps out of her skin when someone sits down next to her. Looking over, she sees that it’s Bellamy, who grins at her through a mouth full of nachos. “That’s attractive,” she scoffs, turning her attention back to the football field.

“Thanks, princess.” She can hear the smirk on his face and doesn’t need to look over to him to see it, but she does reach over and steal one of his nachos. “Where’s my sister?”

She glances over at him. “Didn’t you know? She’s actually just joined the team, because we suck so bad that they figured it couldn’t hurt.” She points to the kicker, a small, lanky freshman. “That’s her.”

He bumps her shoulder with his elbow, rolling his eyes. “So you lost her.”

Stealing another one of his nachos and ignoring his annoyed look, she smiles. “I did, but I saw her just a few minutes ago and I told her that if she doesn’t text me every five minutes I’m calling the cops.”

Bellamy chuckles. “Such a good parent.”

“Trying to learn from you,” she shoots back, grabbing one more tortilla chip smothered in cheese. This time, he doesn’t glare at her. He just smiles and shifts them to his other hand so that they’re more easily accessible to her. “How’s Miller doing?”

“Hating his job, as usual. But he gave me the nachos for free, so.”

Clarke laughs a little, shaking her head. “He’s eventually going to get in trouble for giving you free stuff from the concession stand.”

Bellamy snorts. “Nah. He’s more likely to quit before that happens.”

Another breeze blows just as she starts to reach for more of his nachos, and she shakes again, tugging her sleeves down until she can wrap them over her hands. Bellamy notices, brow furrowing. “You cold?”

Before she can respond, he’s already shrugging off his jacket. He’s only wearing a thin long sleeved shirt under it, but he still places the jacket over her shoulders and then rubs his hands up and down her arms a few times for good measure. “Thanks,” she mumbles, already feeling monumentally warmer.

Even so, she can’t complain when he shifts so that they’re pressed together at the side, sharing some body heat. She leans into his warmth, grabbing another chip as the referee blows a whistle for a flag. It creates a lull in game play, though Clarke is sure that at this point, nothing could save this football game for them. So, she watches Bellamy out of the corner of her eye as he pops a chip in his mouth, some cheese winding up on his bottom lip.

“So, do you actually like football or does Octavia just drag you to these every Friday against your will?” Bellamy asks after a moment, and she has to look away when his tongue darts out to get the cheese off of his mouth.

“Uh…” She shakes her head, her thoughts scrambled. “Yeah I like it. It isn’t my favorite thing to do on a Friday night, but they’re nice enough. What about you? Nerdy history guy like to watch a bunch of guys in helmets tackle each other repeatedly?”

Glancing back over at him, she sees one corner of his mouth twitch upward. “Maybe.”

Clarke elbows him gently. “Liar. You’re keeping tabs on your little sister.”

“Yeah, well. She doesn’t need to know that.” Bellamy looks over at her now, his eyes shining in the bright lights of the field. “You gonna keep my secret, princess?”

She narrows her gaze and he fixes her with a wide gaze that makes her heart beat a little faster. Still, she clicks her tongue and pretends to consider his question. “Okay,” she finally says, smirking. “But on one condition.”

He tilts his head at her, a smirk pulling up his features. “And what’s that?”

Picking up the nearly empty nacho tray, she grins. “More nachos, obviously.”

\------

Halfway through the spring of her freshman year, Wells asks her if she wants to go on a date with him. She hasn’t really gone on dates much, so she says yes. Octavia figures out that she’s nervous, though, and invites herself and Atom, who she’s been seeing, as well as Jasper and Monty and Maya and it turns into a group date within two days of Wells asking her.

She doesn’t tell Octavia that she’s thankful, but she knows that she doesn’t have to.

It’s a Friday night, and Bellamy drops her and Octavia off, walking to the door of the bowling alley with them. He ruffles Octavia’s hair, but hands her a twenty dollar bill when she shoves at his shoulder. “Mom gave me some,” she says, but he’s already closed her fist around the money.

“I know. I’m going to go hang out with Miller for a while. Text me when you want me to pick you up.”

Octavia smiles, tucking herself into his side for just a second before pushing away from him, sticking her tongue out. “Okay, now go. Everyone else is probably already inside.”  

They’re not, but Jasper, Monty, and Maya are, a lane already picked out for all of them. “There’s my girls,” Jasper sings, throwing arms over their shoulders and squeezing them until they make choking sounds.

“Be careful—Atom might protest that,” Monty says, eyebrows raised.

“And Wells.” Octavia grins just a little and Clarke rolls her eyes.

“Wells? He’s like your real date?” Maya’s brow is furrowed and Clarke nods, confused at her expression.

“Yeah, why?”

She doesn’t answer right away, but Jasper does for her. “We all sort of thought you and Blake sibling number two had a thing, like in a hot older guy likes you kind of way.”

Clarke’s mouth falls open, but before she can speak Octavia’s eyes widen and she starts laughing. “Told you! It’s not just me!”

“But—“ She knows she’s blushing, can feel the heat rising on her cheeks, but Atom and Wells choose that minute to show up, so she hides her face as she starts typing all of their names into the computer. By the time she’s done, smiling over at Wells is easy.

Nobody mentions Bellamy again.

Later, when they’re waiting to get picked up, Octavia and Atom are leaning against the wall a little bit away from them, and Wells kisses her. The kiss isn’t anything wild—just a quick press of his mouth against hers. His lips are dry and she doesn’t really react. It isn’t unpleasant, not really, but it feels strange.

Thankfully, he seems to have similar thoughts, scrunching his nose after. She’s sure her own expression is similar.

“Maybe…” He shrugs. “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”

Clarke smiles, leaning her head to rest it against the brick wall of the bowling alley. “Maybe.”

Wells doesn’t seem too bothered, and that makes her feel better. She would have hated if she let him down. They both decide that they’re better as friends, that there aren’t any hard feelings. By the time Bellamy pulls up to get her and Octavia, they’re laughing at Atom trying to do cartwheels.

Octavia kisses Atom’s cheek before climbing into the passenger seat of Aurora’s car, Clarke sliding in the back seat and situating herself in the middle. Bellamy grumbles something about _stupid boys_ that makes Octavia laugh, and Clarke leans forward to tell Bellamy about how Monty won all of their games, but there was one game where he only beat her by eight points.

Bellamy catches her eye in the rearview mirror and grins. “Way to go, princess. I’m sure you’ll get him next time.”

Octavia starts talking then, but Clarke watches Bellamy’s eyes in the rearview mirror while he drives. The lights of the street lamps are illuminating them, and he’s relaxed, laughing a few times when Octavia says something he thinks is funny. Once, he glances back at the mirror and their eyes meet. She tries to move her gaze quickly, like she just happened to look at the rearview mirror at the same time he did, and she doesn’t look back to see if he bought it.

That night, she’s having trouble sleeping, but she can hear the faint sounds of Bellamy’s TV through the wall, so she gets up and drags her feet to his door. She stands there for a minute and just watches him, waits until he turns his head and notices her to shuffle a little farther into his room.

“What’s up, princess?” His voice is quiet, but it seems to echo against the silence of the rest of the house.

She shrugs one shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep.”

He shifts from where he’s propped against his pillows, moving a little closer to the wall and then patting the space he’s just opened up. Smiling, she settles herself beside him, turning to watch the show on his screen. She laughs when she realizes it’s the history channel, something about the Roman Empire.

“Oh my God.” She presses the back of her hand to her mouth to cover her giggles, but he’s laughing a little, too.

“Guilty.” He looks over at her, his smile fading into something just a little sheepish. “I can change it.”

But she can tell he doesn’t want to, so she shakes her head. “No, I’m the one that barged in here. Watch whatever you want, nerd.”

He grins that stupid, wide grin at her and she shoves halfheartedly at his shoulder before relaxing against his side.

“Tell me the truth, should I be worried about his Atom kid?” Bellamy asks after a moment, though his eyes stay trained on his TV.

“I don’t really know him that well, but he seems nice enough.”

Bellamy sighs. “C’mon, princess. You’re supposed to help me out with this stuff.”

“You act like I can control anything your sister does. Have you met her?”

“Once or twice,” he says dryly, and she can practically see his eye roll without even looking at him. “But she does usually listen to you.”

She shakes her head. “She’s about as stubborn as you, you know.”

He huffs, almost a laugh. “Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

And she can tell that he is actually worried, and it makes her heart twist. He just wants to do right by his sister, just wants to make sure that she’s okay, that he’s doing a good job of taking care of her now, without their mom. She never really thought about how he uses her to check in, to gauge how things are going in areas that he isn’t sure Octavia would tell him about.

She reaches over and pats his knee once. “I think she’s okay, Bellamy. If I ever think any different, I’ll let you know. Promise.”

It seems to do the trick, because he relaxes. “Yeah, thanks.”

Clarke absentmindedly watches the TV in front of her for a moment, not really paying attention to it. Instead, the lull in conversation makes her suddenly very aware of how she’s in Bellamy’s bed, pressed close in the dark, everything quiet except for the monotone voice talking about the Roman Forum.

“Wells kissed me.”

The words slip past her lips before she’s really thought about them. She doesn’t know why she says it. Maybe she wants a boy’s opinion. Maybe she just wants _his_ opinion.

He shifts a little beside her, but she doesn’t look at him, keeping her head on his shoulder and her eyes trained on the TV. “Oh?”

“It was kind of awful. We both decided to just be friends.”

“Oh.”

She deflates just a little, because a small part of her had kind of hoped he would react differently. What she wanted, she isn’t sure, but she had been optimistic for _something_. Instead, she sighs, feeling strangely rejected.

“Maybe I’m just unkissable.”

This time when he moves, she can tell it’s to look down at her—she feels his breath on her forehead. “What?”

“I mean, I thought it was just because we don’t like each other like that, but maybe I’m just unkissable. Like maybe it was my fault neither of us liked it.” She picks her head up, curious, wanting to see if she can read his expression. The TV is the only light in the room, so she can’t see his face perfectly, but she definitely doesn’t miss it when his eyes flick to her lips.

Heat rushes through her quickly, and she bites on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from breathing too sharply. He takes a breath and returns his focus to the TV, frowning at it. It takes him a second, but he finally laughs a little, shaking his head. His opposite hand comes up to run his fingers through his hair.

(She wants to know how that feels.)

“You’re not unkissable, princess.”

And with a desire that she’s never felt before, she wants him to show her. Her heart skips at the idea, and he shrugs like her chest isn’t suddenly three seconds away from imploding.

“But—“ she starts, but he shoots her a skeptical side glance and she stops. She didn’t know what she was going to say, anyway. He purses his lips for a moment before glancing toward the hall, like his sister or mother will suddenly materialize at his door.

“Here, I’ll prove it to you.”

He moves, turning his torso more toward her. If he notices her breath catch, he doesn’t say anything. She opens her mouth as if she’ll speak, but no sound comes out.

Can he hear her heart pounding? 

His hands are soft when they cup her face, his lips even softer when they fold over hers without a second of hesitation from him. The first thing she thinks is that this is much better than kissing Wells. The second is that _Oh my God, this is so much better than kissing Wells_.

She pushes back slowly, one of her hands coming up to wrap around his wrist. It doesn’t last long—only a second of his lips pressed to hers—but when he pulls away she still feels like she’s on fire. Her veins are buzzing, blood rushing through her so fast she wonders if she’s having a heart attack.

(So _that’s_ what it’s like to kiss someone you actually like.)  

He chuckles, sounding a little out of breath. She can’t breathe at all, her pulse loud in her ears as he lingers for just a second, tapping her jaw with his thumb.

“See? Not unkissable.”

And then he lets go, turning back to the TV. He’s still close, too close for the way her body is thrumming now. So, she stretches and uses it as a way to put just a little space between them, leaning back on his pillows and trying to figure out how she’s ever supposed to look at him again.

Somehow, he makes it easy when he huffs indignantly at the TV, complaining about how they got something wrong. She laughs a little too loudly in the quiet, and then suddenly it’s easy to settle back against his shoulder and watch the TV, and it’s only when she feels him pick her up later that she realizes she fell asleep there.

His touch is gentle when he wiggles one arm around her waist and one under her knees, and she wakes up enough to hold on loosely, nuzzling her face into his neck. “I got you, princess,” he murmurs, and she thinks she can feel his smile against her forehead. He puts her carefully in Octavia’s bed, pulling the covers up and over her.

She’s pretty sure she mumbles a “thanks, Bell”, but she can feel herself being pulled back to sleep, her eyes heavy. She thinks she feels his hand against her shoulder when he says “Night, Clarke”, just before she succumbs again.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see. How did he do it?” Octavia asks of Clarke’s kiss with Wells the next day, hand digging into the bag of salt and vinegar chips in her lap. She’s sitting cross legged on her couch, back against the arm of it. Her brows are raised, curious.

“He just put his mouth on mine for like, a second. Pretty sure it was the worst first kiss ever.” Clarke sighs, pulling one knee up to her chest and resting her chin on it.

Octavia considers for a moment, tossing another chip in her mouth. “That sucks, Clarke.”

“Shut up,” Clarke says, but there’s no heat behind it. “You had the cutest first kiss ever, like, six months ago.”

“Shhh.” Octavia’s eyes widen and she glances over the back of the couch. “Bellamy’s here and might actually kill me if he finds out. Or Atom. Or both of us.”

“Whatever.” Clarke twists and turns back to the TV, the mention of Bellamy’s name reminding her that Wells wasn’t the only person she kissed yesterday. She hopes that her cheeks aren’t turning as pink as they feel, that Octavia won’t notice.

“At least it’s out of the way, right?” Octavia asks after a moment, also staring at the TV as Clarke flips through the guide.

“Maybe it was me. Maybe I didn’t do it right.” It’s meant to be indifferent, hopefully to let the subject drop. It’s not that she doesn’t necessarily want to tell Octavia, but she’s pretty sure it would be weird if she did.

Plus, it didn’t mean anything. He was just proving a point.

When she passes Tangled, she quickly goes back and puts that on. She glances at Octavia, who nods.

“Maybe you should try again,” her friend suggests softly, shifting a little so that she can better see the TV.

Clarke thinks of how Bellamy’s mouth had been tender against hers, how his kiss had more pressure behind it than her first, but still felt gentle, too. She smiles to herself, a little lightheaded with this secret that she holds. “Yeah. Maybe.”

\------

Two weeks before she turns sixteen, her dad decides that he can’t take it anymore and moves out. He tells her that it doesn’t change how much he loves her, that she can come see him whenever she wants.

His words don’t matter. She nods, of course, tells him that it’s okay, that she understands. She does understand, really she does, but her heart still shatters because he still feels _gone_.

She spends the night crying into Octavia’s pillow, and it’s only after she wakes up the next morning tucked into her friend’s arms that she realizes her mother never called to ask where she was.

Clarke figures that she just knew, but it still makes her hurt, so she goes home while her mom is at work, packs a bag, and stays at Octavia’s for three days before her mom finally calls.

“You need to come home,” Abby says, voice stern.

Tears sting her eyes, and she looks over at Octavia and Bellamy, who are watching her carefully, two pairs of matching, concerned brown eyes. “I am home,” she says, her voice coming out scratchy. But she knows that if she fights, her mom will never let her come back.

So, she picks up her clothes off of Octavia’s floor, repacks her toothbrush that was sitting on the sink, grabs her shampoo and conditioner from their shower, lingering at their door once the bag is slung over her shoulder.

“Call me if you need to talk,” Octavia mumbles into her shoulder as they hug goodbye, letting her go reluctantly. “Love you.”

She turns to Bellamy and gives him her best attempt at a smile. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

When he wraps his arms around her, she’s only a little surprised. She leans into him, fighting the tremble in her chin. It’s like he knows, holding just a little tighter. “Any time, princess.”

**_ Sixteen _ **

**Have you seen O?**

Clarke glances down at her phone as it vibrates, the text from Bellamy flashing across her screen. Frowning , she shows it to Octavia. “Told you,” Octavia groans. “What was that? Five minutes?”

**I’m with her.**

The answer is almost immediate.

**She okay?**

**Yes. Are you?**

“What did you tell him?” Octavia asks, expression sad as she leans her head against Clarke’s knee. They’re sitting at the cemetery, Clarke on a bench and Octavia on the ground in front of it. A small tombstone with her mother’s name on it rests in front of them.

**Always am.**

**You know you don’t have to be.**

She sends the text and runs her free hand through Octavia’s hair. “What do you want me to tell him?”

Octavia sighs, rubbing at her eyes. “Tell him where we are. He should be here.”

 **I’m glad she has you**.

Of course, he doesn’t respond to what she said, dodging like he so often does. Clarke hates that he thinks he always has to be strong. It’s the two year anniversary of his mother passing away, just as much as it is the girl on the ground beside her, tears staining her cheeks.

**We’re at the cemetery. O says  
she wants you here.**

She sends that, then starts typing again.

**I do, too.**

Her chest tugs, and it still doesn’t feel like enough, so she sends one more.

**You know you have me, too,  
right?**

It’s a few minutes before he responds, but she keeps playing with Octavia’s hair and eventually, her phone buzzes.

**Okay. Be there soon.**

And then, a second later, another text arrives.

**And I know.**

She goes to put her phone back down, but it vibrates one more time.

**Thanks, princess.**

He arrives with three lilies—Aurora’s favorite—and they each take one and lay them down on ground beside the grave. After, they all sit on the ground in front of it, Bellamy in the middle. They lean against him and he wraps arms around their shoulders, tense. Eventually, though, his head comes to rest on hers, and she thinks she feels him press a kiss to her hair.

“You don’t have to be,” she whispers against his neck, and if Octavia hears her, she doesn’t say anything. But she knows he does, because his grip on her tightens and a moment later, she feels the moisture of his tears on her forehead. 

She doesn’t speak again, just fists some of the shirt on his back and holds on, letting him lean against her and cry into her hair.

\------

At the beginning of that fall, Bellamy starts taking classes online to try to finish his degree. In the afternoons when Clarke comes over, he’s bent over books or his laptop, glasses pushed up on his nose. He always greets her on her way to Octavia’s room, gaze leaving his class work long enough to smile at her. Every now and then, she sits on the table next to him with a stack of flashcards, quizzing him on random dates or formulas or whatever he happens to be studying that day. His brow furrows when she asks him questions, but he’s nearly perfect every time. It shows in his grades, too, how hard he’s working for what he wants.

She can’t help admiring him even more.

“You know, it really isn’t fair to your classmates that you’re killing it,” she tells him one day as she jumps off of the table, and he grins, taking his notecards back from her.

“Of course I am. I have you to help me.”

She smiles, bumping her fist against his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, for doing this. If there’s ever anything else I can do…”

Bellamy ducks his head, and she knows him well enough to recognize that he’s trying to hide the blush coloring his cheeks. “Honestly, helping me study is great. I… yeah. That’s good, you know. But, um… Thank you.”

(He’s too adorable for his own good, really.)

One afternoon in mid October, he pokes his head in at about four thirty—he’d been deep in an English assignment when she’d come in and she’d only gotten small wave when she walked by. She’s surprised he’s surfacing from it at all.

So, of course, Octavia gasps dramatically. “It lives.” She turns to Clarke, feigning disappointment. “I owe you twenty bucks.”

Clarke rolls her eyes at her friend, her gaze returning to Bellamy, whose brows are raised. “I finished my paper,” he says blandly, giving a small shrug of his shoulders.

“And now you’re bored and desperate for love and attention?” Clarke offers, smirking. His eyes flash playfully, and he’s crossed the room in a moment, claiming the very small amount of bed on her other side. She squeaks when he tosses a leg over her to keep from falling off, wrapping his arm around her middle and holding her even as she squirms.

“Get, off, me,” she laughs, trying to push at him but failing. His arms are too strong, his weight too heavy, even with only half of it on top of her.

“But I need attention,” he whines into her collarbone, and she has to fight back a shiver at the feel of his lips there, turn it into another shove at his shoulders.

“Go somewhere else for it,” she complains, huffing and giving up trying to get him off. She feels his smile against her skin, and she tries desperately not to think about the other places she can feel him touching her—his arm over her stomach, one of his legs on top of hers, his chest against her side.

He relaxes a little, nuzzling her hair, and she takes her chance, pushing at his shoulders and smiling in satisfaction when he starts to fall over the edge of the bed.

She isn’t expecting him to maintain his grip on her waist, so she shrieks when he pulls her with him and she lands on top of him, the breath knocked out of her for a second. But Bellamy is laughing, the action shaking his body and hers by association. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to let her go, though, his arms still wrapped around her. She thinks the way his thumb is rubbing up and down on her back is probably just habit, but it’s still making it hard for her to think clearly. Managing a weak glare is the best she can do.

“Don’t give me that look. You did this to yourself.” His smirk is deep, eyes bright with humor. She rolls her eyes and pushes off of him, ignoring the way his fingers graze her sides as she gets up. They stay sitting on the floor for a moment, and when she looks over at him, he’s grinning.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, but she’s laughing a little, too. She can’t help it—his grin is almost childlike in its glee.

“Love you too, princess.”

Her heart stammers in her chest so hard that it’s painful, and she has to press her lips tightly together to hold back the gasp in her throat. The words seemed so easy and she knows that they’re friendly at the source, familial at best. Still, they echo in her brain a little, even as he offers her a hand up that she takes, his fingers warm in hers.

She settles back beside Octavia, who is strangely silent. Staring intently at her textbook, the only indication that she’s even aware of their antics is the small smile tugging up the corners of her mouth.

“You guys want some popcorn or something?” Bellamy asks, tucking his hands into his back pockets in a way that’s stupidly attractive.

At his question, Octavia looks up, fixing her brother with an exasperated look. “You know we’re not eight, right? If we want a snack, we are capable of getting it ourselves.”

Bellamy doesn’t even falter, reaching over to tug on her braid. She slaps his hand, her eyes sharp but without any real heat behind them.

“Damn.” He steps back, hands up in surrender. “Glad I went to Clarke for that love and attention. To think, my own blood sister has none to give.”

“Bye, Bellamy.”

Bellamy chuckles, tossing a wink at Clarke before slipping back out Octavia’s door. There’s a pause, long enough to hear Bellamy’s steps fade away, and then Octavia speaks, her voice quiet.

“You know how I joked about you marrying my brother? Like, when we were fourteen?”

“Yeah,” Clarke answers simply, picking up her notebook and staring at the words written there, not really reading them. She isn’t sure where Octavia is going and needs something to focus on, just in case.

“You know I still stand behind that.” She says it so casually, like she’s suggesting Clarke try making note cards for their lit exam.

“What?” It’s the only thing she can think to say, her throat feeling suddenly tight.

Octavia shrugs, her eyes flicking over to Clarke for the first time since they started talking. “You guys would be cute together.”

And Clarke shakes her head, because Octavia shouldn’t say things like that to her. Bellamy isn’t like that. He doesn’t think of her like that. What she has for him could be considered a crush at most, a mild attraction that flares up every now and then in his presence but that she mostly has under control.

She takes a moment to make sure her voice won’t shake. “He just thinks of me as a sister, like you.”

“Hm.” It’s the only sound that is made for a long moment. When Clarke looks over at her, she’s biting her lip, brow furrowed in concentration that has nothing to do with the textbook on her lap. Her highlighter is being twirled absentmindedly between her fingers, and Clarke waits for a moment so long that she figures the conversation is over, that they can go back to studying and pretend it never happened at all.

But Octavia sighs, just a little, her voice a murmur when she speaks. “Maybe, but maybe not.”

Clarke doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t. They read in mostly silence until Bellamy comes back right after six and tells them he made dinner. They go sit at the table to eat the lasagna Bellamy has cooked and everything feels normal, like it does nearly every night that she eats with them.

Bellamy tells them about his classes. Octavia talks about the test they have coming up. Clarke mentions that their history teacher this semester reminds her of Bellamy, and he laughs when she explains Mr. Hoff’s obsession with everything Rome. At one point, she catches Octavia’s eye and her best friend smiles easily, any traces of their conversation before nowhere to be found.

She can’t decide whether she’s glad or not.

**_ Seventeen _ **

At the beginning of their spring semester of Junior year, a boy moves to their school with a charming grin and long hair. The first day he’s there, he smiles at Clarke and her stomach flutters. He introduces himself as Finn, and a week and a half later, Clarke has her first real boyfriend.

He’s nice and makes her feel like she’s beautiful, so when his kisses deepen one night after they’ve been dating two months, she doesn’t stop him when he reaches for the hem of her shirt or the button on her pants. She helps him push his own over his hips. Her heart races when he presses into her, but he talks her through it.

For first times, she figures it’s alright.

\------

“That’s the boyfriend, huh?”

Clarke looks up at Bellamy, who’s come to sit across from her at the picnic table in the park near their house. The weather was nice and they’d decided to come enjoy it—Clarke had invited Finn, thinking it was what a good girlfriend would do.

Bellamy had shaken his hand when they’d met, and when Clarke had mentioned wanting a snow cone, Octavia had suggested that she and Finn go get one for everybody. It had seemed strange at the time, but now she wonders if Octavia wanted Bellamy and Clarke to have a minute alone, or if she wanted to talk to Finn, or if maybe she knew that Bellamy wanted to ask questions.

(It’s a big brother thing to do, after all.)

“Yeah,” she says, putting her attention back on the sketchpad in front of her. “That’s him.”

A silence stretches so long that Clarke looks up from the tree line she’s shading to meet his eyes. She can see concern there, mixed with something else that she can’t decipher. It makes her chest squeeze a little, but now that their gazes are locked, she can’t look away.

“He treat you okay?” Bellamy finally inquires, his face relaxing a little when she nods.

“He’s nice. I like him.”

He pauses again, just long enough for her to notice. His eyes flick away. “Good.”

She tilts her head at him. “You don’t.”

“What?” His gaze returns to hers.

“You don’t like him,” she accuses, putting her pad down to give him her attention.

Bellamy looks away again, shrugging. His jaw twitches. “It’s just a feeling, Clarke. A vibe, I guess. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

Something twists inside her, a fear that Bellamy’s intuition is right. He’s definitely been correct in his assumptions before. She pauses, looking down at the drawing in front of her, picking at the corner of the paper with her thumb. Bellamy’s hand reaches out, covering hers.

She stills and looks back up at him, getting lost in the concern in his eyes. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” he clarifies, index finger tapping against her knuckles. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t want to have to beat up someone for you, but I will.”

When she nods, he pulls his hand back and she picks back up her sketch pad.

“You’re really good at playing the big brother figure, by the way,” she mumbles a moment later, because the quiet is driving her crazy and it’s the only thing she can think of that doesn’t make her sound like a complete idiot. “Thank you.”

“I have a lot of practice,” he tells her dryly, and then, _thank God_ , he asks about her drawing. It fills the time easily until Octavia and Finn return with their snow cones. Finn doesn’t seem to be emotionally scarred, so Clarke assumes that her friend was nice.

She can feel Bellamy watching her, so she makes sure she smiles at Finn when he touches her, wanting to assure Bellamy that he doesn’t have anything to worry about.

\------

She’s been with Finn nearly four months when it falls apart.

She’s over at his house on a Saturday. There’s a knock on the door just as Clarke is pulling her shirt back over her head, and she hurries to get the garment completely on so Finn can answer it.

On the other side of it is a girl with long brown hair who wraps her arms around Finn once she’s inside.

And then she kisses him.

And Finn doesn’t push her away immediately.

And her entire world crashes.

Her name is Raven, and she is, apparently, Finn’s girlfriend. She’s just finished telling Finn that she’s visiting for the weekend because she missed him so much when she notices Clarke.

Everything is a mess after that.

Not knowing where else to go, she just goes home and cries, feeling like an idiot. Octavia texts her and asks if she wants to go out for ice cream, and Clarke just tells her she isn’t feeling well.

It’s not a lie.

Finn texts, and calls, but she ignores the calls and deletes the texts, refusing to read them.

Surprisingly enough, Raven gets her number and calls her too, tells her that she’s sorry for how it all went down. She says that Finn is the worst, and that she’s sure Clarke is a nice girl, and that she is aware Clarke didn’t know what he was doing.

It doesn’t really make her feel better.

By the time she gets to school on Monday, the news has somehow gotten around. She’d called Octavia on Sunday and told her, but she knows that it isn’t her best friend who has spread the information.

What, was Finn proud of it?

She feels like everyone is watching her, their eyes hard, and so she feigns illness easier than she ever has in her life, and she runs. She doesn’t think about how Octavia will definitely notice she’s gone, about how everyone will know that she left.

All she thinks about is going somewhere where she can be alone, where she can pretend that she isn’t completely unlovable, only second best to everyone.

She winds up at the same park that they’d been at only a few months ago, eating snow cones and laughing. She parks and drags her feet on her way to a bench that overlooks the lake. It’s quiet, a perfect, warm May afternoon. Some kids are playing on the swings to her right; a couple is down by the lake, fishing rods tossed into the water.

Time passes, and she only gets up once to get some water. She isn’t sure how long it’s been when she hears a voice behind her.  

“Come here often, princess?”

She glances over her shoulder and there’s Bellamy, eyes deep with concern. Sighing, she turns back to look at the lake.

“How’d you know?”

“O texted me. I was out running some errands but I figured I’d try to find you. This is the second place I checked.”

“What was the first?” she asks, curious.

“Our house.”

“Ah.” If she’s being honest, she had thought about going to their house. She knew that Bellamy was off today, but she’d just thought about how he’d known before she did, how he’d been right about Finn after all. So, she hadn’t.

It’s silent for a minute, until Bellamy sits down next to her on the bench. “Finn’s a dick,” he tells her, and she snorts because yeah, she knows that.

“You don’t say.” She winces a little at how bitter her voice is, knowing that it isn’t Bellamy’s fault and she shouldn’t take it out on him.

He clears his throat. “You going to be okay?”

She sighs, glancing down at her hands in her lap and shrugging. Her eyes are stinging with unshed tears, but unlike at school, she doesn’t try to stop them. “I don’t know.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the hand resting on his leg twitch before tightening into a fist. “What can I do?”

When she looks at him, he looks nearly as distraught as she feels, and all of the pain descends faster than she can keep up with. She was stupid, _so stupid_. A knot forms in her throat and it aches, making it hard for her to breathe.

“Tell me it’s not my fault?” Her voice breaks when she speaks, and suddenly she’s crying, big tears rolling down her cheeks. He’s pulled her into his arms in an instant, tucked her underneath his chin. Her sobs shake her body and echo in her ears, so it takes her a second to realize that he’s speaking.

“Princess, no. It’s not your fault. Shh, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. I’m so sorry, Clarke. God, I’m so sorry. It’s not your fault.” His hand is rubbing circles into her back and she focuses on that, letting the action soothe her until her breathing is back to normal.

They sit there long after she’s stopped crying, his embrace never faltering. Her heart still aches with every beat, but surrounded by him it doesn’t hurt quite as bad. He takes her home when the sun starts disappearing beneath the horizon, and they still manage to beat Abby there. When he tells her goodbye at her door, he hugs her again, hand threading in the hair at the back of her neck.

She anchors herself to him, enveloped in his warmth and clinging to something that makes sense.

“You going to go to school tomorrow?” he asks, his breath brushing against her ear.

“If I don’t, people will talk even more.” She sighs, gently pulling away from him. “Thank you, by the way.”

He hesitates, but he reaches up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering. She bites back a shiver and she thinks she sees him smile as his hand falls back to his side.

“Anything for you, princess.”

Finn shows up at school the next day with a busted lip, and when she hears someone ask him where he got it, his eyes flick quickly to her before moving away. He shrugs off the question, hands tucked deep into his pockets.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” she tells Bellamy the next time she sees him, lounging on his couch in pajamas she borrowed from Octavia. He’s unapologetic, even though he seems nervous as he avoids her gaze.

“I know,” he mumbles, rubbing at the back of his neck, but when he glances over and sees her smiling, he relaxes. “He deserved it.”

“I didn’t say he didn’t.”

He pushes playfully at her shoulder and she laughs, shoving his hand away. He grins at her, turning back to the TV and resting his arm on the back of the couch behind her. She leans her head back against it, shifting a little closer to get comfortable, and she winds up pressed into his side, the tips of his fingers grazing her shoulder as they sit.

Warmth sparks in her chest and spreads as she settles into him, and he turns on Frozen even though he hates it. He just knows _she_ loves it. Something about the action, as small as it seems, makes her feel unbelievably loved.

Maybe she isn’t second best for everyone, or at the very least, she doesn’t feel like it. Not around him.

And it’s then, tucked in next to him as Anna sings with Hans, that she recognizes that the feelings for him pulsing through her veins aren’t familial or platonic or even a silly crush, that somewhere in between him trying to yank a crown off of her head and him punching a boy in the face for hurting her, something monumental changed for her.

 It’s then that she realizes, with a sudden, aching clarity, that she’s in love with her best friend’s brother.

**_ Eighteen _ **

“You do realize you have a home, right?”

Clarke looks up at Bellamy from where he stands, leaning against the door frame that connects the kitchen and living room. She’s sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the floor, the TV playing quietly in front of her, five college acceptance letters spread out at her elbows.

He raises an eyebrow, and she smirks. “Yeah, it’s here. Duh.”

“Oh? Well in that case, you should probably pitch in more or something.” As he speaks, he pushes off the wall and comes to sit cross legged in front of her, picking up one of the letters.

“Please. You’d and Octavia would both be lost without me.” His eyes flick to hers from their place on the paper in front of him, his lips twitching.

“You think?”

She rolls her eyes. “You know I keep you sane, loser. Now if you’re not going to help, scram. You’re throwing off my thought process.”

His face breaks out into a full grin and he places the letter back where he’d gotten it from, meticulously smoothing it down. “Okay, princess. What are we thinking?”

Her own smile falters and she frowns, sighing. “I know that my mom wants me to go to one of these really nice schools, with a really good biology program, but…”

Her throat tightens a little and she glances back up at him. His eyes are gentle, and it’s like he already knows what’s plaguing her mind. She pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth and shrugs. “But I know Octavia is going to Arcadia Western, and so is Raven, at least for two years and… the nice schools are far away. I’d never see them, or you.”

When her voice breaks, he reaches over and picks up her hand, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles in a comforting way. She’s mostly just glad he didn’t visibly react to Raven’s name—they’d slept together not too long after the whole Finn fiasco, though Bellamy hadn’t known who Raven was at the time and vice versa. By the time Clarke even found out, Raven had already incorporated herself into their circle, and both of them had sworn it was just the one time, shrugging it off.  

(But sometimes Clarke is still bothered by it, and she wishes that Raven had found someone else in a bar that night to flirt with.)

“What do you want to do?” Bellamy’s voice pulls her out of her thoughts, soft and supportive.

Clarke’s eyes are stinging a little, but she clings to his hand, anchoring herself to the warmth of his palm. “I want to stay here, with you and Octavia and our friends. If I wind up going to a medical school somewhere far away, then fine, but… maybe I can put off those goodbyes for a little while longer.”

Bellamy gives her hand a squeeze. “And your mom?”

She takes a breath, knowing that the conversation with her mom will be a tough one. Feeling suddenly tired, she leans her head forward until it’s resting the place where his shins are crossed. “She won’t be happy, but it’s my decision.”

Her answer is shaky, and Bellamy reaches up with his other hand to play with her hair. She relaxes against him. The papers are getting a little crumpled underneath her chest, but Bellamy’s fingers are rubbing against her scalp and her head is in his lap, so she really doesn’t care.

“Well, no matter what, I’ve got your back, princess.” His fingers squeeze hers.

“I know. Thanks.” Her heart swells a little in her chest, her affection for him pulsing through her veins with every beat of her heart. It’s a little overwhelming, and it’s moments like this where it’s hard to push away the fact that she loves him. He’s so important to her that usually it’s easy to decide that his friendship matters too much to risk it. Most of the time, she’s able to keep it on a backburner in her mind.

But now, with him this close and his hand tangled with hers, it’s much harder to do.

So, she lets herself enjoy his fingers massaging through her curls, lets herself close her eyes and imagine, just for a moment, that he’s doing this because he’s her boyfriend and not just because he’s being a good friend.

(A best friend.)

Her mom is definitely angry, but once Clarke assures her that medical school is still the end goal, she relaxes for the most part.

Octavia, surprisingly, is the one that is more upset.

“Are you sure?” she asks after Clarke tells her, brow furrowed. She’s curled next to Clarke on the couch, with Raven standing in front of the TV and scrolling though Netflix. “I don’t want you to regret not going to a more prestigious school.”

“I don’t care about that right now,” Clarke counters, suddenly wondering if she should have not brought her decision up so casually. “I want to stay around my friends for a while longer.”

Raven selects Lilo and Stitch, settling into Clarke’s other side as the opening credits start to play. “We just love you, you know? And you’re crazy smart. You could go anywhere.”

“And you can’t?” Clarke asks, arching a brow.

Raven just shrugs, her commitment deposit for the school nearby already paid. “I like it here. Visiting on the weekends when I can sucks. I might as well just move and be done with it.”

“I just want to make sure you’re where you belong, and you belong in a big, prestigious, smart person school.” Octavia’s voice is resigned, a complete contrast to the bright, Hawaiian music coming from the TV speakers.

An ache blooms in Clarke’s chest, and she shifts so that she can wrap an arm around both of their shoulders. “I belong wherever I want to be. And this is where I want to be. Right here.”

She smacks a loud kiss on Octavia’s head, then Raven’s, thankful when it draws the desired reaction—they giggle, shoving at Clarke just a little but not going far.

“Get off me, freak.” But Octavia is smiling, and after that, it’s easy to get them excited about the idea of them going to college together.

Clarke even suggests that they could all get an apartment, and that animates both Octavia and Raven for weeks. Octavia starts talking about how they could decorate and having roommate game nights every other minute, and Clarke is honestly surprised she doesn’t have laminated spreadsheets of her ideas.

Bellamy is a little less excited, frowning at the idea of Octavia not living with him. Octavia soothes his concerns, telling him that he can come over whenever he likes—it’s only a twenty five minute drive—and that she’ll probably still come home a lot, too.

“Plus, I’ll be with Clarke,” she adds, tugging the mentioned party into her arms. “Responsible, level headed, pre-med major Clarke Griffin.”

Bellamy scoffs. “Not who I’m worried about.”

He shoots a look at Raven and Clarke kicks at his shin, saying that it’s defending Raven and not because of the swell of jealousy that had risen in her stomach. He dodges it, regardless, and she rolls her eyes.

“I promise I’ll take care of little Octavia,” she swears, putting her right hand up as if swearing in at court, the other wrapped around a grinning Octavia. “Protect her from evil, all that stuff.”

“And from me,” Raven adds, wigging her eyebrows.

“Right,” Bellamy says, but he’s smiling and they know they’ve won.

When she graduates, her mom and dad sit beside each other without speaking, clapping when her name is called.

But then she hears a whoop above the polite applause, a deep voice yelling, “Way to go, princess!”

She meets his eyes with a playful glare once she’s sitting back down, and he winks. Her heart jumps at the action, and she mentally curses at it for acting out of command. She’s annoyed that sometimes little things are what send a jolt of adrenaline rushing through her veins as if she’s been shocked.

It’s dumb, really.

After the ceremony, she finds Octavia first and hugs her tightly. That’s how Bellamy finds them, pulling both of them into his chest without breaking their own embrace.

“My favorite girls, all grown up,” he says, feigning tears even though Clarke knows it’s to cover up genuine ones. They both shove him away at the same time and he laughs.

“I’m going to go check and see if Maya is going to that party—she still had to ask her parents,” Octavia says before disappearing into the crowd.

Clarke glances back at Bellamy, who is staring at the spot where his sister just was. “Should I be worried about this party?”

She shrugs. “I don’t think so. You could probably even come if you want. It’s supposed to be really chill.”

He shakes his head as if to clear it, turning his attention to her. His smile turns sweet and her pulse jumps against her will. _Stop it,_ she tries to command, but it’s useless. “I got you something.”

Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out a small box and hands it to her. He seems suddenly nervous—his hands are stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans and his rocking back and forth a little on his heels. It almost makes her want to laugh, the idea that she wouldn’t like something that he’s giving her. The fact that he got her anything at all is enough to send her heart into a frenzy.

She opens the box slowly, pulling the lid off to see a silver charm bracelet sitting inside. One charm has been added—a small crown with a pink jewel in the center. Meeting his eyes again, she smiles. “It’s so pretty.”

His lips quirk. “You like it? It’s not too cheesy?”

She shakes her head, smirking and arching an eyebrow at him. “I am your princess, have been since I was ten.”

That makes his face break out into a full grin, even though he bites on his bottom lip as if trying to contain it. It’s stupidly adorable and she’s worried that he’ll be able to read her expression, so she wraps her arms around his waist, holding tightly and trying to keep her heart rate at a respectable level as he hugs her back. His presses his cheek to the top of her hair, nuzzling gently.

(God, she’s screwed.)

It takes her a long moment, but she eventually is able to pry herself away from him. She grabs the bracelet out of the box and gets his help to clasp it around her wrist, smiling when the crown shines against her skin.

“I’m proud of you, princess.”

She feels her cheeks warm, and she spots Octavia not too far away. Bellamy follows her gaze as she speaks. “I’m proud of _you_. You did it, she did it.”

“Hm.” He’s quiet for a second, and she thinks she feels him sway closer to her, his arm brushing against hers. “I probably couldn’t have done it without you.”

She meets his eyes. “You could have.”

He doesn’t seem to agree, but he shrugs a little, gaze soft when he looks at her. “Yeah, well, I’m glad I didn’t have to.”

Her heart is swelling to the point that she can’t breathe so she averts her eyes, forcing her lips into a smirk. “Thanks, dad.”

He doesn’t reply, so she looks back to find him looking at her strangely. She can’t read the expression and she can’t figure out anything in their conversation that would make him look at her like that. Is it because she called him dad? She figured he’d know it was a joke, not that she was calling him old or something.

She tilts her head at him. “Are you having a stroke?”

It’s another second of him gazing intently at her, mouth twisted as he assesses her, before he shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “No, it’s nothing. Sorry.” He smiles at her, but it still seems off. “I think your parents are looking for you.”

She looks in the direction that he is, and her parents are standing not too far away, but they’re talking to Wells’ dad, not looking for her. She returns her gaze to Bellamy, but he’s back at Octavia’s side a few yards away. She goes and hugs her parents quickly, denying their offers for a graduation dinner and then finding the Blakes again. Tucking herself into Octavia’s side while they talk with Jasper, Monty, and Maya is easy, and when they go to leave for Jasper’s, Bellamy drops a kiss on both of their heads and tells them to have fun but be careful.

She thinks his gaze lingers on her for a minute, but she doesn’t look in his direction, so she can’t be sure.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

**_ Nineteen _ **

Clarke meets Lexa three and a half months into freshman year at a mixer for a fraternity. The girl is leaning against a back wall looking monumentally unimpressed, and Clarke thinks she looks like someone she could get along with. Striking up a conversation is easy, the two beers and shot of fireball already buzzing in her head.

“You look like you’re contemplating setting this place on fire.”

The girl smirks, raising her brows. “Who says I’m not?”

Clarke puts up her hands. “Don’t tell me for sure. I don’t want to be an accomplice.”

It makes her laugh, and then her eyes flick over Clarke appreciatively. “I’m Lexa,” she says, extending her hand.

“Clarke.” She shakes her hand, leaning back against the wall with her.

In the end, when Lexa kisses her that night, she hesitates for only a moment before she surrenders to the gentleness of the girl’s touch, the softness of her hands and her curves. It takes her a week to tell Octavia because she knows that once she does, Bellamy will probably know. She isn’t sure why it matters—Bellamy doesn’t think of her that way and she really likes Lexa regardless.

(She really just needs to let that go.)

She thinks she could really be happy with Lexa, this girl who is all snarky comments and dark eyes, who smiles at Clarke warmly and whose touch makes goosebumps rise on her skin.

Still, she’s a little disappointed when Bellamy eyes her carefully upon their introduction, even though he smiles as he shakes her hand. Lexa doesn’t seem bothered by it, and Clarke figures she’s dealt with a protective brother figure before. Or maybe she’s just an impenetrable force of nature that doesn’t get put off by something so trivial.

They all hang out at their apartment, and they wind up throwing popcorn at each other, half of the time trying to ring each other’s mouths and the other half trying to hit each other with the kernels.

Clarke is a little put off when Lexa doesn’t seem to want to participate and goes to ask her if she’s okay, but then a piece of popcorn smacks her on the side of the face and her attention gets pulled back to the Blakes and Raven.  

When Bellamy leaves, he wraps her in a tight hug, squeezing her until she huffs against him, pushing helplessly at his chest until he loosens his hold. “I’d like to remind you that if you kill me, there will be no one here to protect your baby sister from the big bad wolf.”

“Guilty as charged!” comes Raven’s voice from behind them, her smirk devious when they look at her.

Bellamy just rolls his eyes and ruffles her hair, grinning when she glares at him. “Whatever. See you later, princess. Again, nice to meet you, Lexa.”

Lexa nods with a smile, and then Bellamy is gone. Clarke feels his absence immediately, the emptiness of it lingering even when Lexa kisses her goodbye half an hour later and heads home herself.

The two of them make it just over five months, until right before finals in the spring. Clarke is lounged on Lexa’s couch, head in her lap, when Bellamy texts her.

**Guess who got a job teaching  
history at your old high school?**

She smiles, thinking for only a moment before typing her response.

**Jasper?**

**I hate you.**

**No you don’t.**

**You’re the worst.**

**You’d be lost without me**  
**and my humor and you know**  
**it.**

He doesn’t text back immediately, so she texts again.

 **Congrats on the job, Bell. I’m proud**  
**of you. Let me know if any of the kids**  
**give you a hard time. I’ll beat them up.**

When a reply doesn’t come for another moment, she locks her phone, knowing that he must have gotten busy or something must have come up. It’s only when she has tucked it back into the pocket of her jeans that she realizes Lexa has stiffened.

“You okay?” she asks, and Lexa sighs.

“No. I think we need to talk.”

Clarke sits up, confused. “About what?”

Lexa purses her lips, but she has that look on her face that means she’s already thought about this for a while. It makes Clarke feel like she’s lost a battle even before Lexa has spoken. “You’re in love with Bellamy.”

As if on cue, Clarke’s phone vibrates in her pocket and her hand twitches toward it before she stops herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, instead of trying to lie. Lexa is good at picking those out. “He just thinks of me as a sister.”

Sighing, Lexa shakes her head. “Even if that’s true, I do not want to be in a relationship where I feel I have to compete for affection.”

The finality with which she says it only further confirms Clarke’s fear. “You’ve already decided. There’s nothing I can say to change your mind.”

“You can tell me you don’t love him.”

But they both know she can’t. Tears start stinging her vision because she really likes Lexa, had even thought that Lexa could eventually help her get over Bellamy. At the very least, she thought she had gotten better about her feelings for him since they’d been together.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke offers, and Lexa gives her a small shrug.

“It’s okay. It was fun.”

Fun. Six months and all it boils down to is fun.

Still, she reaches over and wraps her arms around Lexa, holding on tightly for just a moment. It’s all the goodbye she’s really going to get.

“Good luck,” Lexa replies into her neck, pressing the smallest of kisses there. What she’s wishing her luck for, Clarke doesn’t know.

Feeling dejected, she leaves feeling dazed. It’s only when she’s sitting in her car that she finally feels tears track down her face.

It isn’t necessarily just the loss of Lexa, but a sudden fear that maybe she’s just terrible at relationships and all the ones she tries to have are doomed to fail. She could blame her feelings for Bellamy, but even remotely thinking of him being at fault feels awful. He didn’t do anything wrong. She’s the one who can’t seem to let him go long enough to actually have a real relationship, something more than just _fun_.

Her phone vibrates again and she pulls it out quickly, glancing at the two texts there.

**Would you really beat  
kids up for me? **

**Princess?**

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t text back for a genuinely long time, but she knows that he has a sixth sense about those kind of things, especially with her and Octavia. He always seems to know when something is wrong.

Feeling suddenly tired, she taps his name and hits the little phone icon instead of texting back. He picks up almost immediately.

“Clarke?”

“Hey.” Her voice cracks, and she hears him inhale sharply.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” His tone is immensely soft, and she wishes he was there beside her so that she could tuck herself under his chin and cry while he holds her.

“Lexa broke up with me.”

He’s quiet for a minute, so long that she pulls her phone away from her ear to make sure the call is still connected. It is, so she puts the phone back to her ear just as he speaks. “I don’t think it’d go over well for me to punch her, but I will if you want me to.”  

His words do what she’s sure he intended—she laughs. “Thanks, but that’s okay.”

“You want to get some ice cream? Netflix is mandatory. Talking about it is completely optional.” She can nearly hear the smile in his voice, and she suddenly wants nothing more than to be near him, so she cranks her car and puts it in reverse to get out of the parking lot.

“I’ll be at your house with a big tub of chocolate ice cream in thirty minutes.”

He laughs a little. “Okay, good. Drive safe. I’ll see you then.”

Before he can hang up, she speaks. “Hey, Bell?”

“Yeah?”

“I would beat kids up for you, by the way.” She’s smiling now, the tears on her cheeks nearly dry when she touches her sleeve there to wipe them away.

 Another chuckle reaches her ears. “Good to know, princess.”

They wind up laughing at How I Met Your Mother all night, the ice cream tub tucked in between them. Once it’s empty, Clarke shifts and stretches out on the couch, propping her head up on Bellamy’s leg. His arm drapes over her side and his other hand runs through her hair where it’s splayed on his lap, the motion soothing.

She hadn’t done this in months, not wanting to even blur the lines between what would be acceptable for someone in a relationship with another person. But lounged out of his couch, surrounded by his warmth, his fingers in her curls— it feels like home, more than anything else ever has.

Part of her wants to tell Bellamy her fear—that all of her relationships are doomed—but she chickens out, too afraid of what he might say, that his response would disappoint her no matter how much she tried. It’s also terrifying to even think about approaching the fact that her feelings for him are likely the reason.

Instead, she relaxes in his lap and lets the comfort of him lull her to sleep. When she wakes up the next morning, she’s in Octavia’s old bed alone and the house is empty.

But there’s a note on the kitchen island, Bellamy’s handwriting endearingly messy.

_Left breakfast in the microwave—your favorite, of course. Eat up and then go to class if you feel like it. You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you like._

_B_

Smiling and pulling out her phone, she shoots him a quick text. She thinks she remembers him saying something about having to go into the school today to do paperwork, so she isn’t expecting his response as quickly as it comes.  

 **You might want to get**  
**someone else to grade**  
**your student’s essays or**  
**something, because they’ll**  
**never be able to read your**  
**handwriting. Also, thanks for**  
**breakfast. You’re the best.**

 **Essays are turned in**  
**online and so is the**  
**feedback, so joke’s**  
**on you, princess.**

**And I know. You’re  
welcome. **

**\------**

At the beginning of sophomore year, she takes an introductory art class for fun and meets Lincoln, a senior majoring in fine arts. He’s mostly quiet, sitting on his stool and doing his work, but one day she comes in late due to exhaustion, looking like an absolute mess, and he lets her use his charcoal pencil because she left hers at home.

He smiles when he hands it to her without speaking, and she takes it, grateful. “You read minds or something?”

“Just perceptive.”

They become friends easily, bonding over their love of charcoal stained fingers and watercolor paint. In mid October, he tells her that his friend Anya is throwing a Halloween party and asks if she wants to go. She says she’d love to, but asks if she can bring Octavia. When Lincoln asks about her, Clarke pulls out a picture of the girl and watches with glee as his eyes widen, his head tilting in appreciation.

“She’s cute, huh?” Clarke grins and Lincoln blushes.

“I would very much like it if you’d bring her,” he answers, suddenly seeming intent on finding the perfect mixture of red and blue paint.

“You got it.” 

Clarke spends most of the party mingling, trying to give the two of them space to get to know each other. She thinks it wouldn’t have mattered if she was with them or not—once they saw each other, they were the only two people who existed.

Watching her best friend fall in love is bittersweet. Seeing her so happy is something Clarke had always hoped for, of course, but seeing them together also makes her stomach twinge a little—not in jealousy, but just in longing.

She wishes she had what they had.

**_ Twenty _ **

At the end of the semester, she has to submit a final project, and she decides to do portrayals of all her friends in favorite medium—charcoal. She does Octavia and Lincoln first, putting them side by side on the left, gazing at each other. She puts Bellamy next to his sister, arm propped on her shoulder, and then herself next to him, leaning against his shoulder and smiling up at him. Finally, Raven takes up the rightmost space, a smirk evident on her features.

It’s cute, and she thinks she managed to get the details of everyone’s faces. The Sunday afternon before it’s due, she’s seated at Bellamy and Octavia’s table to add finishing touches, Octavia lounged on the couch with a dozing Lincoln.

Bellamy comes in from the kitchen, where he’d been cleaning up from lunch, eyes glued in the direction of his sister. Clarke huffs and his eyes shoot to her, brow arched. “You know I met him first, right? If I hadn’t thought he was a decent guy, I wouldn’t have become friends with him and definitely wouldn’t have introduced them.”

“Unless you’ve finally found the perfect plan to get back at me for all those times I teased you as a kid,” he deadpans, even as his cheeks redden just a little.

“I would never,” she replies, but she grins at him anyway.

When he shakes his head at her disapprovingly, some hair falls in his eyes.  

Most people would probably think he needs a haircut, but she kind of likes the mess.

A moment later, he’s right behind her, leaning enough in her space that she can smell the soap he must have used to wash the dishes.

“This is really good,” he tells her, propping his chin on her shoulder to look at her creation. She tries not to let her breath catch at his warmth, how close he is, how little it seems to affect him.

“Thanks,” she whispers, smiling a little as she uses her pinky to smudge the corner of her pants unnecessarily.

He doesn’t say anything else, and she makes the mistake of turning her head to look at him. For another moment, he’s staring at the paper in front of them, but then he turns to look at her and he’s close, so close that she knows it would only take the slightest movement forward if she wanted to kiss him.

And she wants to, the ache burning so hot for a moment that she can’t get air in her lungs. She wants to know if it will make her heart race the way it had when she was a teenager, if his hands would still be gentle or if her age now would pull a bit more passion out of him.

If he wanted to kiss her, that is.

He smiles, the corners of his lips tilting up as he looks at her so affectionately that she lets herself think, for just a moment, that he just might.

She doesn’t get the chance to find out, because Octavia calls Bellamy’s name from the living room and she jolts away from him. Focusing back on her work, she doesn’t look back at him when he stands, his hand brushing against her shoulder as it slips off the back of the chair she’s sitting at. Without saying anything, he goes into the living room and she’s left feeling cold, her heart pounding and her cheeks hot.

Time passes, and he doesn’t come back. She makes a few more changes to the paper in front of her, absentmindedly, until she knows that any other tinkering would definitely mess something up. She tucks it away, washes her hands, and then walks into the living room, joining everyone else. Octavia and Lincoln seem comfortable on the couch, her head in his lap. Raven is curled up on their bean bag chair. Bellamy is sitting in the recliner, their only other piece of furniture, his legs tucked under him. With the warmth of his gaze still fresh in her mind, she plops herself down on the floor in front of him, leaning her head back against his knee.

He reaches forward to scratch his fingers on her scalp, his legs unfolding on either side of her. “You want to sit up here?”

She shakes her head just a little. “No, you don’t have to get up.”

There’s a pause, and she thinks she can see Octavia watching them closely out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t say I would.”

Thankful he can’t see her face, she bites her lip, fighting the heat trying to rush into her cheeks. “You sure?” she asks, and his hand just moves from her head to her shoulder, tapping it.

“C’mon, princess.”

So she stands and settles in on his left side, half on the arm of the chair. It takes them a second to get situated, but she settles her legs across his lap and leans her head back next to his. “Comfortable?” he asks, his voice only loud enough for her.

She just nods, because she’s the most comfortable she’s ever been and she _wants_ , wants to be with him so badly that she can’t think straight, much less get two words past her lips.  

It’s later that night, back in their apartment, that she crawls into Octavia’s bed, feeling so sure and so lost, all at the same time.

“I’m in love with your brother,” she says quietly, picking at the corner of one of Octavia’s pillows. Her best friend wraps an arm over her shoulders and tucks her under her chin, and Clarke doesn’t know why, but a few tears slip from her eyes.

Octavia rubs her knuckles across her back, voice quiet and solemn when she says, “Yeah. I know."

\------

“So? How’d you do?” Bellamy asks two weeks later from where he sits on their couch, feet resting on her lap. She’s using his ankles as a prop for her laptop, logging into their Blackboard to see what she made on her final project.

She finally gets the screen pulled up, grinning at the results. She puts down her computer and her eyes find Bellamy’s. “A+.”

He sits up and wraps her in a hug without taking his feet out of her lap, making the position a little awkward. So when Octavia comes in, she shoots them a weird look. Clarke rolls her eyes. “I made an A+ on that art project.”

Octavia’s face brightens, and then somehow she squeezes herself into Clarke’s lap from the other side, and she winds up in a Blake sandwich that makes her heart feel full. She wraps one arm around each of them, but winds up snuggling into Bellamy just a little more. Octavia smirks, but doesn’t comment on it.

Raven comes in and raises a brow, but thankfully just sits down on the arm of the sofa next to Octavia instead of trying to add to the pile.

“I made an A on that art project,” Clarke explains, and Raven grins.

“Way to go, Griffin. I told you anything with my face on it was destined for greatness.”

They all laugh, and Octavia squeezes one of Clarke’s cheeks. “So much artistic talent, wasted on a premed major.”

Bellamy laughs into her hair, and she holds tighter to his arm.

“Maybe I’ll change my major,” she jokes, but it comes out sounding a little sad.

They all pick up on it, _of course_ , pulling away enough to look at her. Octavia frowns. “Clarke, you should do whatever makes you happy.”

She feels a nod against her other shoulder, and looks over to see Bellamy’s brows furrowed. His thumb is tracing small circles on her arm. “What she said.” 

“Definitely,” Raven pipes up, reaching a hand around Octavia to touch her shoulder.

They’re being honest, she knows, but even the idea of not being a doctor seems foreign, like something she’d never really think about. It’s what she’s been planning since she was little. Her mom would probably kill her. Her dad would probably be thrilled, though, which would make her mom even angrier.

Shaking her head, she smiles at them. “Okay, enough therapy for today. Thanks guys.”

They detangle themselves from her carefully, and she takes a deep breath once she has the air again. Bellamy keeps his feet in her lap as he puts his head back on the opposite arm rest, turned just enough to see the TV. Octavia settles on the recliner, smiling an obviously Lincoln based smile at her phone. Raven stays on the arm of the sofa, attention now on the news playing in front of them.

Nothing else is said as Clarke retrieves her laptop from where it had fallen in between her legs and the arm of the couch, checking other grades. Nearly out of habit, she glances over at Bellamy after a moment, and their eyes meet. He taps his foot against her stomach the best he can with her laptop restricting his movement, winking at her. The action sends a thrill through her, but she pushes it down quickly, turning back to her computer screen. 

She catches Octavia watching them, but her best friend has stayed strangely quiet since Clarke openly admitted that she loves her brother. She’d expected her to intervene, to do _something_ , but she hasn’t said a word about it since and, as far as Clarke knows, hasn’t said anything to Bellamy either. The only thing that changed was the knowing look in her eyes, the smirks she shoots her when Clarke teases him, the way she always seems to be keeping an eye on them, like she’s waiting for something.

Of course, she’s talked about Clarke marrying Bellamy since they were fourteen, so she probably is.

(Clarke might be, too.)

\------

She changes her major to Fine Art one month into the spring semester of her sophomore year, because she decides that if she has to walk into Organic Chemistry II one more time, she’s going to murder someone. Her mom is livid, calling every day to tell her that she’s making a mistake, that it’s not too late to switch back. She even finds out that her mom tried to call the school and have it switched back for her, but thankfully, only Clarke can make the choice.

(Almost like it’s a choice about _her_ future, or something.)

Still, dodging her mother’s disappointment, or at least attempting to, is exhausting. So, while it’s usually no big deal to have Lincoln and Octavia and Raven around all the time, the fact that there are three people at her apartment suddenly feels like too much to deal with. It’s not their fault, and Clarke knows that, so she does the smartest thing she can think of at the time.

She packs a bag, tells Octavia and Raven that she’s staying with a friend, and shows up at Bellamy’s door.

He takes one look at her and his brow furrows in concern. “What’s wrong?”

Words fail her for a moment as she looks at him, this man that she loves so much it hurts. She shrugs one shoulder. “I changed my major.”

Understanding flickers across Bellamy’s features and she’s grateful, _so grateful_ that he knows her so well. “Your mom not happy?”

She shakes her head, already having to fight the tremble in her chin. “Not at all. And… Lincoln is at our place and I didn’t want to bother them, so… I came here. I guess I should have called or—“

Bellamy cuts off the start of what would have been a panicked ramble, pulling her into his chest. It’s a little awkward, with the bag over her shoulder restricting one of her arms, but she brings the other one up around him and anchors herself against him. “You’re always welcome here, princess.”

Five minutes later, she’s sitting on the counter while he puts a frozen pizza in the oven. Silence lingers between them, the air heavy. She’d asked him about how teaching was going, and now she’s silent, so much she wishes she could scream and not knowing where to start.

Eventually, she’s too tired to be angry anymore.

“I’m not enough for her,” Clarke whispers, knocking the back of one of her feet against the cabinet. “If I’m not a doctor, I’m not good enough.”

“That’s bullshit.” Bellamy turns, leaning his hip against the counter next to her. “You’re amazing no matter what you do and your mom will come around and see that.”

“I hope so. I just… I wish she could proud of me for… doing what I want. But it’s not what she wants.”

His face falls, and he reaches toward her. “Clarke—“

A knock at the door cuts off what he was going to say, and she’s never been one for crazy book metaphors, but she swears Bellamy’s face goes completely white. “Damn.”

She glances at the door and then back at him. “What? Expecting someone?”

He smiles a little… sheepishly? She isn’t sure. “Yeah, it’s Gina. I should have text her and cancelled, but I almost forgot.”

Clarke’s heart drops. “Gina?”

Bellamy looks at her but she can’t read the expression on his face, and her stomach turns uncomfortably. “Yeah, this girl I met, like three weeks ago? We’ve kind of been seeing each other, I guess.”

“Oh.” She’s staring at him, mouth hanging open a little, but she can’t get control of her pulse, or anything else even remotely functional.

Bellamy has a girlfriend.

The ache blooming in her chest is one she hasn’t felt before, new and one of the worst pains she’s ever experienced.  It suddenly takes precedence over the ache of her mom’s disappointment. Bellamy is speaking, and it takes her a second to catch up to his words.

“I can tell her I can’t tonight, she’ll understand.”

“No.” Clarke manages to speak clearly despite the tightness of her throat. She jumps down from the counter, not meeting his eyes. “No, I’m the one intruding.”

Suddenly, she wants to be far away from him, so she shakes her head when he starts to argue. “No, seriously. You should do whatever you were planning to do.”

He shrugs. “We were probably just going to hang out here.”

Trying not to read too far into that, Clarke looks away when she speaks. “Oh, okay. That’s fine. I’ll just go, then.”

“Clarke, you should at least stay to eat.”

Another knock sounds, and Clarke manages to move her feet, sliding her shoes on. Bellamy’s hand wraps around her elbow and he stops her, glancing once at the door and then squeezing her arm.

“Hey, wait. Just… stay here for a second, okay?” Bellamy pleads before going to the door. She can hear him using his explaining voice, soft and easy, but something resembling panic is rising in her throat and she doesn’t think she’s taken a substantial breath in so long that her lungs are starting to ache. She needs to go, she has to be away from him.

And her.

So, she slips past Bellamy from where he stands at the door, putting on a brave front just for a moment.

“Oh hey, I was just leaving.” Clarke forces her lips into a polite smile. “You must be Gina.”

Her hand feels heavy when she lifts it to shake the hand of the girl in front of her. She’s pretty. Gina smiles a little, but confusion is definitely deep in her features as her eyes flick back to Bellamy.

“Clarke, wait—“

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Gina,” she cuts him off, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to get away. She manages to slip a relatively normal “I’ll see you later” to Bellamy before walking up the drive to her car. She thinks he calls her name again, but she doesn’t turn around, not even for a second, because tears are already slipping down her cheeks before she’s even opened her car door.

She drives a mile and then pulls over because she can’t see through the moisture in her eyes. Leaning her head against her steering wheel, she sobs into the emptiness of her car. This pain shooting through her chest just tells her how naïve she was, how much she had actually started to believe that Bellamy Blake could ever love her like she loves him.

She’s not enough for her mom.

And she’s not enough for him.

Her phone is vibrating in the passenger seat and she sees Bellamy’s name, but she just turns her face back into her steering wheel, her tears still steady falling. It keeps going off, and eventually she picks it up to turn it off only to see Octavia’s name instead.

She takes as deep of a breath as she can manage before she answers. “Hey.”

“Lincoln went back to his place.” Octavia’s voice is full of understanding, and Clarke feels fresh moisture pooling in her eyes.

“He has a girlfriend.” She sniffles, a sob escaping her chest.

“I know, babe. Come home, okay? Do you need me to come get you? Can you drive?”

She takes a second to consider the question, wiping at her eyes. Octavia waits, the only sound on the other end of the phone call coming when she hears Raven’s voice, muffled. Finally, Clarke is able to inhale without the air catching in her throat.

“I can drive,” she whispers, her words raspy. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Be safe, okay? We love you.”

Clarke hangs up the phone, wiping once more at the moisture on her cheeks. Glancing at her phone screen, she sees Bellamy’s texts, all close together in time, the last one coming about three minutes before Octavia called.

**Are you sure you’re okay?**

**You can come back if you need to.**

**Please answer the phone.**

**At least tell me you’re not in a**  
**ditch somewhere. You seemed**  
**really upset.**

**Clarke, please.**

That was the last one, the one before he must have called Octavia, before he’d ran through his story, having no idea what had gone wrong, before Octavia had realized exactly what was wrong, and called her. She takes a deep breath and goes to put her phone down, but a short vibration signals another text, this one long.

 **Octavia told me you’re okay,**  
**that you’re going home. I’m**  
**sorry your mom is mad at you,**  
**but you never do anything half**  
**way and I know you’ll be an**  
**amazing artist. She’ll come**  
**around, and you know I’ll**  
**always be on your side. Let**  
**me know when you get home**  
**safe, please. And let me know**  
**if you need anything else.**

She puts her phone down quickly, afraid to stare at the words for too long. Turning on her favorite radio station, she pulls back onto the road toward her apartment. Part of her thinks she can’t ever speak to him again, not without feeling like her entire body will rip in half, but she knows he’ll worry, that even if she’s in love with him and he has a girlfriend, he cares about her as if she was another little sister. So, when she pulls into their parking lot, she texts him, sending it quickly without much thought.

 **Made it home safe. Goodnight**.

She’s putting her key in the lock when her phone buzzes.

**Good. Goodnight, princess.**

She curls up on her bed between her roommates that night, tears slipping down her cheeks as she tells Octavia and Raven everything—how he kissed her after she kissed Wells, how she knew she loved him after he punched Finn, how Lexa broke up with her because of her feelings for him.

They stay mostly silent, listening, hands and arms tucked around her. When Clarke finally runs out of things to say, Octavia sighs, seeming perturbed. “I’m really sorry. I thought—“ She stops, the silence that falls lingering for a moment before she speaks again. “My brother’s an idiot.” 

“You don’t have to pick sides.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not. I just… I don’t know how he doesn’t… Maybe he just doesn’t…”

Octavia can’t seem to get a full sentence out, tripping over her words. Through the light coming off of a street lamp out the window, Clarke can see that her brows are deeply furrowed. It’s quiet for a long moment, until Raven speaks. “I could find a way to break them up.”

It almost makes her laugh, but she shakes her head. “No, I want him to be happy.”

“What about you?”

The question makes fresh tears sting her eyes. “I don’t know.”  

They tuck themselves in as close as possible and she falls asleep, exhausted. If she dreams, she doesn’t remember a single one.  
\------

She starts coming up with excuses not to see him.

Gina becomes increasingly prevalent, and even though Bellamy doesn’t seem to do the whole PDA thing, just seeing this girlfriend tucked in next to him once, in _her_ spot on the couch, is enough to make her want to lock herself in a room and never come out.

Bellamy doesn’t seem concerned at first, texting her as if nothing is wrong, asking how her week is going, how classes are, how the art major is treating her. Any time plans come up, she uses school as an excuse—she has homework, a project, something she needs to work on.

Octavia never argues, but she looks sad when she wraps an arm around Clarke’s shoulders before disappearing out their door.

Bellamy texts her sometimes when Octavia shows up to his house alone, telling her it sucks that she has homework. He offers, a few times, that she can come work on her projects at their place, that he doesn’t mind. She considers it, once or twice, but she’s always so afraid that Gina will be there, that she’ll have to watch Bellamy be with someone else, and she remembers how stupid she was to fall for her best friend’s older brother in the first place.

At the same time, she knows she never had a choice. She couldn’t help it.

“He misses you,” Octavia says one day, after she and Raven come home from spending a day with Bellamy and Lincoln, probably Gina.

She didn’t ask.

“Hm.” Unsure of what else to say, she stares intently at the drawing spread out in front of her, willing herself not to tear up.

“I don’t…” Octavia huffs, and Clarke sees her rub at her forehead from the corner of her eye. It makes a twinge of guilt flare up in Clarke’s chest, that this seems to be affecting her so strongly. “You don’t have to like Gina, but… you don’t have to completely shut him out, either. You’re hurting him. And I know you miss him, too.”

Sighing, she sets her pencil down and looks over at Octavia. “Maybe someday, but… I just can’t right now. I have to… I have to find a way to be okay with it. And I’m not there yet.”

Octavia stares at her for a long moment, until she finally nods. “Okay. Just… maybe at least text him back. He’s starting to get mopey about it. And you know how he is when he’s mopey.”

Raven nods. “It’s really annoying.” 

Her lips twitch up just a little at the thought, so the next time Bellamy texts, she doesn’t immediately clear the notification. Instead, she picks it up and opens it.

**How’s my favorite artist doing  
this week? I miss you. **

She sends him a picture of her most recent drawing, no caption included. He texts back quickly.

**That looks really cool,  
what did you use? **

**Pastels, mostly. Super  
messy, but really pretty.**

**I like it. I guess something**  
**like that does keep you**  
**pretty busy.**

_“He misses you.”_

Remorse closes up her throat for a moment, with anger at herself that she’s not capable of being around him for more than two minutes without wanting to cry or scream. Sighing, she hovers her fingers over her keypad for a long moment before typing her response.

 **Yeah, it does keep me**  
**pretty busy. I’m still**  
**getting settled into**  
**changing my major.**

  
She hesitates, but types another text and sends it before she can second guess it.

**I miss you, too.**

His response takes a second this time, but it’s right before three on a Thursday, so she’s sure that he’s getting ready to leave the school for the day. At five after three, her phone buzzes.

 **I’m proud of you for**  
**going after what you**  
**want. Just don’t be**  
**a stranger, okay?**  
**I need my dose of**  
**Clarke or I might**  
**take it out on some**  
**kid. And lose my job.**

She smiles, her heart twisting just a little, the ache still ever present. But Octavia was right. She misses him, misses his smile and the way he smirks at her, misses his kind eyes and the way his hair falls in his eyes. Pursing her lips for a long moment, she types her response four times before she finally sticks to something.

 **I guess I can try to**  
**find some time soon.**  
**For the sake of the kids.**

**I’m sure they’ll be  
eternally grateful. **

**And I will be, too.**

Putting her phone down, she doesn’t respond to that. She doesn’t promise anything that she isn’t sure she can keep. She’ll try. That’s all she can do.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

**_ Twenty One _ **

When she turns twenty one that fall, Octavia insists that they’re going out to celebrate, with everyone— Lincoln, Raven, Wells, Bellamy, and, unfortunately, Gina.  

Clarke tries to argue, but Octavia’s glare strangely reminds her of when they were kids, when a single look could silence anyone on the receiving end, and she decides not to test it.

“Fine, but I have to be at least three drinks in before I see either of them.”

It’s a condition Octavia can live with.

By the time Bellamy and Gina show up to their apartment, Lincoln and Raven are lounged on the couch watching a football game, waiting on Octavia and Clarke to finish getting ready. Clarke is slipping earrings into her ear and struggling a little—one Budlight, one vodka sprite, and two shots of tequila already running through her veins. She finally gets the back onto it and manages to smile at the two of them, but then pours a round of shots and downs hers before anyone can even pick theirs up.

“Little fast there, huh princess?” Bellamy’s smirk is deep.

“I can handle it,” she tells him, noticing he has a tiny box in his hand, topped with a tiny bow.

“I thought we established presents this year were buying me drinks downtown,” she deadpans, and his response is to shrug, handing it to her anyway.

“I’ll still buy you drinks, too. Promise.”

Her heart twists, and she wants to hug him because this is probably the longest in person interaction she’s had with him in months, but Gina is standing just a little behind him and so she doesn’t, afraid she wouldn’t be able to let go, scared that her feelings would show on her face.

She opens up the tiny box and inside is a charm, the same shade of silver as the bracelet that she still wears on her arm. She’d taken it off for a grand total of four days after she first found out about Gina, but her wrist had felt so empty that she’d winded up putting it back on within the week. For some reason, it made her feel like eventually they would be okay, that she was still his, in a way, and that even if things were hard now, they’d be okay some day.

At the very least, it gave her something to hold onto.

Now, she picks up the tiny paint palette charm, biting on her bottom lip to keep her chin from trembling. He’d never bought her any other charms for the bracelet, but she hadn’t cared. The crown nestled onto her wrist was perfect just the way it was, but the fact that he’s chosen now to add to it makes moisture build in her eyes.

She loves him so much, loves how much he cares and how thoughtful he is. She loves that he knows her so well, that he’s always had her back, that she’ll never find anyone who makes her heart race the way he does at the same time that he feels so much like home. She loves the way he’s peering up at her from beneath his lashes, trying to gauge her reaction to his gift, hands tucked into his pockets.

She loves him even if she can’t be with him, even if all she gets is this—presents on birthdays, hugs when they haven’t seen each other in a while, the smile he gives her that lets her know he’s proud of her. If she had the choice between just his friendship and nothing, she’d pick anything as long as he was in her life.

“I always wondered if you’d ever add to it,” she says, finally meeting his eyes.

His lips twitch. “Well, I figured major life events were good. Graduation, changing your major to something that you actually want to do…”

She knows her smile is full of affection, but she can’t rein it in for the life of her. Unable to help it, she steps forward until she can tuck herself into his chest. His arms come up around her and she holds on tightly, one tear slipping down her cheek that she presses into the darkness of his shirt so that he won’t notice. She should pull away, because this is definitely too long of an embrace, but he doesn’t seem to be making any moves away either, so she doesn’t let go until Octavia speaks.

“So, one more shot for the road?” It’s meant for everyone, but it finally gets her to release her hold on his waist. He looks a little flustered, his gaze flicking back to Gina before finding hers again.

She shoves away the idea that one second’s worth of a glance means anything, because it doesn’t. Thinking it does is dim-witted of her.

“Here, I’ll put it on for you,” he says, hands reaching for the charm. He attaches it easily, and then they head over to where Octavia is pouring another round of shots. Clarke appreciates the burn of the alcohol as it travels down her throat, relishes in the buzz in her veins.

Right before they head out the door, Octavia’s eyes widen and she reaches into a small bag by the couch. “I almost forgot,” she giggles, pulling out a plastic crown with “21” in the center. “For the birthday princess.”

“That’s my nickname,” Bellamy challenges, but he’s grinning when Clarke settles the crown onto her head, pinning it swiftly in place with some hair clips.

She glares playfully, feeling more like herself than she has in months with him next to her. “Bellamy Blake, even think about touching this crown and I swear to God—“

He’s laughing now, and at Gina’s raised eyebrow, he shrugs. “Try to tug a girl’s crown off one time, and she remembers it for a lifetime, apparently.”

(God, she loves him.)

They go from bar to bar throughout the night and it all starts to blur together, but she remembers dancing to old pop songs with Raven and Octavia and Gina while the boys watched from against a wall. She remembers tucking herself into Bellamy’s side any time they walked to a new bar, her steps faltering much less with his arm around her shoulders. She remembers Bellamy scaring off a guy that was hitting on her while she tried to order drinks, his hand warm on her cheek when he made sure that she was okay. She remembers Raven flirting with Wells the entire night, thinking to herself that they would be pretty cute.

She remembers looking up at one point and realizing that Gina was gone, and she remembers that Bellamy had waved it off when she asked, saying something about her getting tired and going home.

And through the pounding in her head the next morning, her crown half hanging off of her lamp, she remembers that she had wrapped her arm around his hips, pressing her face into his neck and telling him that if she was his girlfriend, she’d never leave him.

Now, she drinks the water and takes the ibuprofen sitting on her nightstand, curling her knees to her chest and trying to recall if Bellamy had said anything after that, if he’d acted any differently. He’d still held her close when he’d walked them outside for them to wait on an Uber, and she vaguely remembers his touch tucking her into bed.

He must have been the one that left the water and painkillers.

Waiting until her headache has dulled a bit, she crawls out of bed and pulls a hoodie over the tanktop and sleep shorts she’s already wearing. She definitely doesn’t remember getting dressed for bed, and wonders if Bellamy had helped with that, too, or if one of her roommates had been sober enough to do that part. Padding past Raven’s room, she sees she’s still asleep, one arm and leg half hanging off of her bed. Wells is passed out on the couch. She finds everyone else in the kitchen, Bellamy at the stove scrambling eggs while Octavia sits on the counter with a bowl of cereal in her hands. Lincoln is standing beside her, rubbing her scalp gently.

Bellamy is speaking, sounding amused. “I tried to get you and Clarke to drink more water last night, but you didn’t listen.”

Clarke snorts. “Did you expect us to?”

He turns at the sound of her voice and grins, the expression looking easy. “Morning, princess. Hungry?”

She nods, and he stirs at the eggs one more time before scooping some onto a plate and handing it to her. Taking it with a grateful smile, she hops onto the counter beside Octavia, who leans her head on her shoulder. “Did you have a good birthday?” she asks, her voice a low mumble.

Clarke plops a piece of egg into her mouth, resting her head on top of Octavia’s. “I did. I was with my favorite people, how could I not?”

(Well, with one exception.)

Curious, she turns back to Bellamy. “Did Gina make it home okay? I’m sorry she got tired.”

Bellamy’s eyes flick to Octavia and Lincoln, and she’s suddenly extremely upset at herself for drinking too much, because there’s obviously something that she missed. “What? What’s up?”

“Yeah, yeah she did,” Bellamy says quickly, turning off the stovetop.

A silence falls, but Octavia breaks it, slipping off of the counter after dropping her bowl in the sink. “I think I still need some rest. C’mon, Lincoln, we can watch Netflix on my laptop.”

Once they’re gone, Clarke concentrates, thinking about last night and what she could have possibly forgotten. She wants to ask, because racking her brain is doing absolutely nothing to fill the gaps in her memory or clear up the parts that are fuzzy. Instead, she eats her eggs slowly, glad to have the feeling of something settling into her stomach. Bellamy is cleaning up, so the silence stretches.

Yeah, she’s definitely missing something.

Once she’s finished, she places her plate in the sink from where she sits and watches him finish washing the dishes, shifting when he needs to get past her to put up the now clean plates in the cabinet. He doesn’t seem to be too enthusiastic to give her his attention, so she winds up toying with the bracelet on her wrist, shifting it around so that she doesn’t have to stare at him and wonder why he’s suddenly so quiet.

He stills once he’s put up all the dishes, though, so she looks up and finds him watching her. His eyes flick to where she’s still playing with her bracelet, and the smallest smile twitches up the corners of his mouth. 

“Do you really like this thing?” he asks, reaching up to touch it gently. His finger brushes her wrist and she feels goosebumps rise on the flesh there.

Too tired and hungover to think up something otherwise suitable, Clarke is honest. “Bellamy, I don’t care for jewelry that much. But I’ll probably wear this bracelet every day for the rest of my life because you gave it to me.”

Something strange flashes in his eyes, and he tilts his head at her. “Really?”

Feeling heat rush into her cheeks at the way he’s watching her, she reaches over to thumb at the tiny crown charm, now sitting next to one of a paint palette. “Yeah,” she answers, not meeting his gaze. The shrug of her shoulder does little to take away from the weight of the statement in her chest, nothing to conceal the swirling of emotions lingering much too close to the surface at the moment.

The silence stretches, but eventually, Bellamy speaks again. “Gina broke up with me last night. That’s why she went home.”

Her mouth drops open before she can control her reaction, and then she furrows her brow, frowning. “I’m so sorry, Bellamy. I—“

He’s shaking his head, waving a hand dismissively, so she stops. “It’s fine. It’s not like that or anything, and it wasn’t because of last night in particular, not really.” He pauses, shrugging. “It never would have worked anyway.”

“Oh.” It’s all she can think to say, and Bellamy is giving her a questioning look, his eyes curious, brows furrowed like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.  It’s making her stomach twist into knots because it’s so different, and she doesn’t think she recognizes it. She wishes she still had the plate of eggs in her hands, just for something else to focus on because she feels like she’s drowning under the intensity of his eyes, helpless and with no one there to help her.

“She broke up with me… because I’m in love with you, Clarke.”

This time her body does jolt, but her eyes snap back to his. Her mind replays the last few seconds over and over again just in case she heard him wrong. He’s still looking at her with that same expression, but she can’t get her mouth to move, can’t form coherent thoughts.

He can’t mean it. There’s no way.

When she doesn’t respond after a moment, his eyes move away from hers, one shoulder rising in a half shrug. “It was just the way we were acting last night, I guess. You kept telling me… that I was your favorite person and… you kept hugging me and it… I guess she saw through any pretense I tried to keep up and called me out on it, but I think she knew before last night. That’s why it never would have worked. It’s always been you, I think.”

He’s looking at her and she knows he’s expecting her to say something, but she’s pretty sure she’s still wearing the same shocked expression, her heart pounding in her ears. She feels more nauseous now than she did last night, more than she ever has in her entire life. She’s surprised he can’t hear her heart, as hard as it’s pounding.

At her silence, Bellamy clears his throat, running a hand through his hair. Like he does when he’s nervous.

“She told me that… she thinks you feel the same way, that she thinks that was why you stopped coming around so much lately, because of her. I told her she was crazy, but... But she seemed really sure, and then Octavia said she was right, too. Actually, Octavia told me I was an idiot, so… I don’t know. I guess I’m telling you… to see if it’s true. And if she was wrong, or whatever, it’s fine. You’re like… my best friend and I get that this is probably weird because we kind of grew up together but… If you don’t feel the same way it doesn’t have to change anything, and—”

“Bellamy.” She cuts off his rambles with a breathy laugh, shaking her head as she finally finds her voice. “You idiot, I’ve been in love with you since we were kids.”

He tilts his head at her, and she sees the moment that the stress leaves his body. “Really?”

She nods. “I… sort of figured you knew, honestly. And I thought you just saw me as another little sister.”

“Maybe I did, at first.” He takes a deep breath, gaze moving from hers to the window behind her. He’s smiling, though, like her admission of returned feelings took just a moment to settle in. “But I wouldn’t offer to kiss my sister.”

Her cheeks warm at the memory, but he’s grinning and she shoves halfheartedly at his shoulder. He sobers after a moment, reaching over to pick up her hand. He holds it gingerly, like he’s afraid that she’ll run away if he doesn’t. Or maybe he’s giving her the slack to pull away if she wants. She isn’t sure.

“I’m crazy about you. And I only even dated Gina because…  I realized earlier this year how bad I had it, and I didn’t want to risk what we had for just a chance that you might feel the same way, so… I was trying to convince myself I could get over it, you know? But then you stopped coming around and… I missed you so much, princess. Not seeing you drove me crazy.”

Clarke looks down to stare at their hands, fingers tangled. “I just couldn’t see you with her. It hurt too much. At least at first, but… not seeing you drove me crazy, too.”

Now, his smile returns as he shifts closer, his fingers holding hers a fraction tighter. “Sorry that I was an idiot, princess.” 

“Well,” she drawls, smiling at him. “You’re here now.”

“Not too late?”

She shakes her head, wrapping one foot around his hip to pull him even further into her space. He settles between her legs, free hand resting on the counter beside her. “For you? Never.”

He leans in slower than she would have originally preferred, but the way his nose brushes next to hers makes her heart stammer. By the time he kisses her, lips soft and gentle, she’s already melted into him. His hands slide up her sides and wind up cupping her face, his thumbs just barely stroking against her cheekbones as his mouth moves over hers.

He’s in no hurry, taking his time to kiss her properly, his tongue lightly teasing against her bottom lip. Even as tender as he is, every inch of her feels like it’s been set ablaze, and she hates that she never said anything before, that she didn’t know sooner he loved her, too, that she spent so much of her life not being able to kiss him, instead holding onto a single kiss when she was fifteen.

She thinks she’d be perfectly content to just kiss him forever when a voice breaks them apart.

“Fucking finally.”

Raven is standing in the doorway, squinting a little in the kitchen light but otherwise looking completely not hungover. She’s smirking, arms crossed across her chest.

“Apparently I’m an idiot.” Bellamy shrugs as Clarke feels her cheeks warm, though she isn’t upset that he seems to be perfectly content to stay in her arms.

Raven clicks her tongue, patting his shoulder when she grabs the plate of eggs he left out for her. “Hope you weren’t expecting an argument, Blake.”

He’s laughing when Raven walks back out of the kitchen, and he presses the sound into her collarbone, resting his forehead on her shoulder. She wraps a hand around the back of his neck and holds tight, wanting to keep him there forever.   

(She just might.)

\------

“You know she loves you, right? You literally don’t have to be this nervous about giving her presents.”

Bellamy blushes even harder at Raven’s words, the brunette raising an eyebrow from where she’s settled beside Wells. Clarke tucks herself a little closer to Bellamy to try to ease some of his discomfort, keeping her grip on the small box in her hand.

“She’s not wrong,” she says, raising a brow at him. He smiles, the expression small and a little shy.

“We’ve only technically been together two months,” he mumbles, giving a half shrug of his shoulders.

“Yeah, but I’ve been in love with you since I was like, fifteen.”

That brightens his face, his teeth flashing with a grin. He wraps an arm around her and presses a kiss to her head, but she knows he’s trying to hide his giddiness in her hair. She lets him, leaning into his embrace.

“Ugh, I take back everything I ever said about you two. You’re the worst.” Octavia rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning from where she is propped up in Lincoln’s lap.

It had surprised her, really, how easily she and Bellamy settled into being together. It was almost like they were before Gina happened, except that now, he kisses her all the time and tells her that he loves her almost every chance he gets. If she ever mentions the frequency, he shrugs with pink cheeks and tells her he’s making up for lost time.

She definitely doesn’t mind.

“Open the present, Clarke,” Bellamy chuckles once he’s pulled away, giving one quick annoyed glance at his sister for good measure before returning his attention to her.

Inside the green and red box is another silver charm, this one simple—a tiny silver heart. She can feel Bellamy’s eyes as she picks it up, only to find “B+C” etched into the other side. Her actual heart feels like it might burst out of her chest, but she doesn’t want to make Bellamy too uncomfortable in front of his sister. So, she just picks it up and hands it to him, extending her wrist.

“Pick a spot for me,” she says, and he does, although he’s almost too distracted meeting her eyes to get the charm on properly. When he’s done, he keeps her wrist in his hand, thumb pressed against her pulse as he rests his forehead against hers.

He doesn’t seem to have any concern for the other people in the room at all when pecks a quick kiss against her lips.

“We get it, you’re adorable. Who’s next?” Raven says with a grin and a roll of her eyes, grabbing her present for Octavia and handing it to her. 

Clarke settles into Bellamy’s side to watch everyone continue opening presents, their eyes bright in the lights that Octavia insisted decorate their apartment for Christmas. She feels his lips press into her hair again, softer and sweeter this time. His breath brushes against her ear when he whispers, “I love you, princess.”

She smiles, tangling their fingers together on his lap. Stretching up, she brushes a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “I love you, too. Thank you for my new charm.”

Clarke turns her focus back to their friends, and Octavia smiles when their eyes meet. It makes her wonder if, even as much as she complains now, seeing this was really something she’d always wanted to see. Had she really always held on to the hope that her best friend and brother would wind up together? She makes a mental note to ask her, one day soon, when she really started taking the joke from when they were kids seriously.

(Turns out, it was never a joke to begin with.)

**_ Twenty Three _ **

“My princess, all grown up.”

Bellamy’s voice is muffled against her forehead, but she hugs him back even as he knocks her graduation cap off center. She has to reach up to keep it from falling off her head completely.

“You know, your sister just graduated, too.”

He shifts away from her, keeping one arm around her and using the other to tug Octavia into his other side. “My sister and my princess, all grown up.”

“What about me?” Raven pipes up, grinning when Octavia and Clarke each grab an arm and pull her into the embrace.

Lincoln and Wells stand not too far away, and her parents have already disappeared from the crowd, neither of them lingering too long in the same spot these days, with Abby parading around a new boyfriend.

Her mom had, at least, told her she was proud of her, and had told her that she hoped she was happy. Clarke is still pretty sure that the Bachelor of Arts is probably still a disappointment compared to a Bachelor of Science, but still, Clarke thinks that it might be progress.

(Either way, she has everything she needs right here in her arms.)

That night, they have a tiny celebration, just the six of them, and when Bellamy gives her a tiny box, she already knows what it is. This charm is two interloped rings, and when she looks back up to ask him what they’re for, he’s down on one knee.

With another small box in his hand.

Octavia has her phone out, Clarke manages to notice, probably recording the whole ordeal. Bellamy looks up at her, the ring box in his hand not holding nearly as much of her attention as his face.

“I love you,” he tells her, like maybe there’s a chance she doesn’t already know. She does, of course—can see it so clearly in the adoration coloring his features, in the smile that he gives her every single day. “I always have, and I always will. Will you marry me, princess?”

He has the audacity to look nervous, as if she could ever tell him no.

“Of course, you idiot,” she tells him with an affectionate eye roll. He grins, slipping the ring onto her finger and the new charm onto her bracelet, both shining brilliantly against her skin.  

Later, curled into his side on the couch, she tells him, “I think we’re running out of big events for us to add to the bracelet.”

He squeezes her hip, reaching over to finger lightly at the charms settled on her wrist with his free hand.

“I’ll figure something out,” he muses, but then he tilts his head at her. “Which one is your favorite?”

She purses her lips at the tiny pieces of jewelry on her arm, and then she uses her index finger to brush against the tiny silver crown, the first charm he’d ever given her. “This one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nods, sure. “When… when you were with Gina, I… I still wore the bracelet and looked at it every day and thought… maybe even if it never worked out between us, that we would be okay. That I’d still… I’d still always be your princess.”

He’s quiet for a minute, his hand still resting at her wrist as he processes her answer. After a moment, he pulls her a little tighter against him, pressing his lips to her hair. He holds her there for a second, and she leans into his touch. “Well, you’ll definitely always be my princess, Clarke.”

Her heart tugs in her chest and she smiles, twisting enough to press a kiss to his jaw. “And you’ll always be my idiot.”

At that, he chuckles, shoving just a little at her shoulder, the force so minimal that no space is put between them. “I love you.”

She settles back against him, tangling their fingers together and reveling in the way her engagement ring presses against her skin. “I love you, too.”

 

_we were legends,_  
_loving you baby, it was heaven_  
_what everyone wondered,_  
_we never questioned_  
_closed our eyes and took on the world together_  
_do you remember?_


End file.
